Synopsis: From the back cover of the Del Rey first edition: "Prodigal daughter - When Nuala Dennehy returned to Ireland after fifteen years away, a male relative was designated responsible for her actions. She was assigned a church to report to, denied any birth control devices, issued a compulsory ID chip, and sent on her way - wondering what in the world had happened to her beloved country. No matter that the twenty-first century had arrived, bringing an alien contact and human colonization of the stars; church-ruled Ireland had met the millennium with a social backlash landing squarely on women. A few Irish women were fighting the erosion of their rights in small ways - and Nuala quickly joined the rabble-rousers. She was a professor, not a leader, but she could a least plan disturbances and write pamphlets. But when an arrest became a deadly firefight, the stakes grew higher: Nuala emerged a fugitive - and a national symbol of rebellion. The she began to see what one woman - one strong, determined woman who knew the inspiring history of the Irish - could do to awaken a nation..."