In the 1890s on an island off the Irish coast, Conor Broekhart is falsely imprisoned and passes the solitary months by scratching designs of flying machines into the walls, including one for a glider with which he dreams of escape.
Driven from their impoverished Irish village, fifteen-year-old Maura and her younger brother meet their landlord's runaway son in Liverpool while all three wait for a ship to America; their fates continue to interwine on board ship and in the new world.
At Alveara boarding school in Belfast at the start of World War II, thirteen-year-old Jessie must deal with her suspicions about a teacher whose father was German and with her worries about her own father's drinking problem.
With the help of fairies, Seamus the farmer and his scrawny goat, Finny, win top honors at the King Puck festival in Killorglin, Ireland, and receive a lifetime supply of books.
Jack and Annie travel back to nineteenth-century Ireland to inspire a young Augusta Gregory to share her love of Irish legends and folktales with the world.