The Rising of the Moon

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 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 at 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. Then 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...