“Once famous, now forgotten, the artist John Mulvany was feted throughout the United States in his own time. He came to national prominence as an artist in both Ireland and America in the second half of the nineteenth century. His Custer’s Last Rally and Battle of Aughrim encapsulate his remarkable cultural credentials. He was one of the first to go to the frontier, where he broke new ground as an artist. But there was more than a whiff of cordite around Mulvany. His involvement with Clan-na-Gael, and the dynamiting campaign in London, had deadly consequences. While a number of scandalous liaisons add to a fascinating life story in which art and politics, Irish and American, are deftly interwoven. This meticulously researched novel is an act of important cultural retrieval by his great grandniece, Anne Weber.”

— Niamh O'Sullivan, Professor Emeritus of Visual Culture

“Anne Weber's beautifully rendered story is based on her research into John Mulvany, an ancestral family member whose lineage she has traced back to Ireland and his journey to New York City in the early 1800s. Weber's writing captures the mindset of a young man as he figures out how to make a scant living in the land of promise, and further, how to become the artist that he dreams himself to be. The reader is carried as though by magic through the landscape of Manhattan and Brooklyn, and even upstate in a character-building work experience young John undertakes on the Erie Canal. It is a riveting book that paints a portrait and brings to life both the people and the growing pains of a young nation.”

— Susan T. Landry, Poet