This book takes as its framework the life span of Nicholas (Nixie) Boran, born in 1904 in Massford, almost the centre point of the Castlecomer Coalfield, Co. Kilkenny. At the time the estate lands of the landlord family, the Wandesfordes, were being divided among small, formerly tenant, farmers. The book focuses on one man, but through him explores the world in which he lived as a coal miner, as a Republican freedom fighter during the Civil War, during his life on the run and his return to his roots in mining. It maps the tensions inherent in concepts of Irish freedom and charts Boran’s conversion to socialism as the path towards what he regarded as real freedom for the working class.
The Castlecomer Coalfield was the context in which post-independence battles for a share of Ireland’s resources were played out. The miners challenged the powerful, whether they were the mine owner, the new Free State or the Catholic Church, to give them the social freedoms and conditions they deserved.