When three score and ten years had passed since American rebels fought for independence, the descendants of schism inflamed pilgrims watched the Revolutionary War's remaining battle heroes depart this world in fatigues of bedfast surrender. As the passing of their heroic founding fathers heightened the patriotism that raged in America's electric life flow, it excited an inheritance of sectarian animus to a fevered, anti-immigration pitch. Spawned from an affluence of patriotic fervor, nativist street gangs threaten immigrants across New England as Michael, the toddling son of an absent, Irish sailor da in antebellum Boston of 1845, is made a ward of the state when his mam falls ill and blasphemes herself into asylum. Struggling with a virulent antipathy towards Ireland's bitter 'moral economy', his incarcerated mam is burdened to endure maternal loss while, taken in by the surly, elder cook of a ribaldrous Irish alehouse, Michael works as scullion when nativists erupt into violence and attack the inn.
