Bright Bewildering Green is a vivid, harrowing tale - told from the emotional security of middle age - of an impoverished childhood in rural Northern Ireland during the 1950s and early '60s. In its detailed evocation of the realities of life for an orphan family on an Armagh hill-farm, the sentimentality of the family pig is bled to death.

William vents his frustrations on John, his sensitive youngest brother, and severe beatings lead to the boy's collapse and treatment for epilepsy until he escapes to Coventry. 'A story remarkable because commonplace in rural Ireland - the surplus child, the tragedy of the extra mouth.' - from the Foreword by John Stalker