Two brothers, Owen and Thomas Joyce, barely survive the horror of the great famine that devastated Ireland in the 1840s. But it left a lasting effect on both of them. Three decades later they are thrown together during the Land War, when evictions and landlord cruelty reach an intolerable level.

But Thomas places his trust in the gun, while Owen backs the passive resistance advocated by the Land League. Captain Charles Boycott, an English land agent in Mayo, becomes the first to suffer this new form of revolt, when he and his family are ostracised. It is a David versus Goliath situation, with Boycott supported by the military, the police, the press, the British Government. How can peasants stand against an empire?

And how will the two brothers reconcile their differences and confront their troubled past?