The fifth volume of An Irish Family Saga, this work deals with travails of Irish migrants in U.S. and with family back home, still avoiding pointing an accusing word at the English or British, but instead pointing at Irish themselves for not being beyond joining those extorting slave labour from migrants and keeping them not only miserable but in danger of life unless they complied.
Thomas is asked by his father to investigate about a son of a neighbour back home, and is now himself is in danger.
Family back home meanwhile is joined by MaryAnne, presumably the prodigal of the title, who's brought George, her own son by Gilmore, although she maintains she's adopted the orphaned boy who's care she was given by his dead mother. Gilmore was never enamoured with her, only used her, and she was shrewd enough to have used blackmail to get money and saved it, enough to buy her own place in Blackrock to open a lodging house and a tea room.
Her return has brought strife back, although Mary and James love their daughter, even though their youngest son Jamie and his wife cannot stand her. Jamie is upright, but James, who's proud of him, has to warn his youngest about staying away from wrong kind of rebels.
The author ends this one with Thomas and Patrick, having rescued Petey, have a chill between them about Patrick's killing of a dangerous man on trail of Thomas, and MaryAnne unnerved at her own reaction to sergeant Broderick courting her. James and Mary are still unaware about George being their own grandson, and Jamie has arrived at a compromise with his wife working for MaryAnne - Annie can cook in her own kitchen and deliver it without entering MaryAnne's home.
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June 03, 2020 - June 04, 2020.
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