Ernie O'Malley was a revolutionary republican and writer. One of the leading figures in the Irish independence and civil wars, he survived wounds, imprisonment and hunger strike before going to the USA in 1928 to fundraise on de Valera's behalf.

Broken Landscapes tells of his subsequent journeys, through Europe and the Americas, where O'Malley moved in wide social circles that included Paul Strand, Edward Weston, Hart Crane and Jack B. Yeats. Back in Mayo he took up farming. In 1935 he married Helen Hooker, an American heiress, with whom he had three children, Cathal, Etain and Cormac, before a bitter separation.

His literary reputation was established with a magnificent memoir, On Another Man's Wound (1936). In later years he was close to John Ford, and worked on The Quiet Man (1952).