For Tom Nestor, childhood was a soaring adventure across a rural landscape. With no place for him on the land or affinity with its toils, he resolves to escape. With his pack of dogs he strides off into the carefree world of a curious boy in a magical time. Set in the countryside around Rathkeale in County Limerick, not twenty miles from the poverty-stricken lanes and ashes of Limerick city, this memoir is peopled with such characters as the mad aristocratic Absalom Creagh, and Miss James and Miss Abigail who taught through the medium of religion and terror.