In a mud cabin near Skibbereen, Brigid Doherty, a mother expecting her fifth child, lies on trodden earth. The baby is stillborn. Potato blight's pungent smell lingers in the autumn air. The plight of the Doherty family is the lot of all poor people. The rent is paid, only just, courtesy of the pig. Blight covers the Relief Commissioner's struggle with bureaucracy, Molly Maguire's killing of sheep, the gombeen man's lack of pity for a poor widow and the pawnbroker's eye to booming business. The ships carrying famine victims to North America disappear in the Atlantic mist. Anna, a fifteen year old with an eating disorder, remembers her early childhood and teenage years which shape her famine novel.