Before the Last Ballad

Emerald Harbour, 1882. Schoolmistress Nóra Friel turns a respectable charity concert into an act of rebellion when she sings the forbidden final verse of her father's ballad, exposing the hunger and evictions powerful men prefer unnamed. Arrested into the uneasy custody of Cormac Ó Dálaigh—a childhood friend now working among the very ledgers the town distrusts—Nóra discovers the song may point to proof of stolen relief, illegal evictions and a conspiracy her father died carrying.