There is a silence in an old Irish house that is not emptiness but attentiveness, as if walls listen for steps that left 100 years ago. Many houses that carry that silence are not palaces. They are big stone buildings on Atlantic points, ruined piles with ninety seven windows, steward's houses that inherited a mansion's name after the big house was demolished in 1941, and council houses on Galway estates built in the late 1960s. This book follows the houses you can stand in front of today....

"Dream Life and Real Life" is a haunting short story about a little orphan girl in servitude to a cruel Boer family. One night, following a beating, she runs away and hides in a cave. But there she overhears three men plotting to rob and burn down the Boer's farm and kill the family. What should she do? Warn them, or let them burn to death?