My husband's family is from Ireland. When we go to Dublin, one of our favorite things is visiting Sean's sister Lorraine's fashionable architectural-statement apartment, with 5 Georgian windows overlooking the Liffey. Her dining room even has more windows, richly curtained with golden brocade. She is the essence of style, doing magical things with vegetables and olive oil, puff pastries, and lamb. I love looking out her windows at the night sky over the Liffey as kitchen smells waft throughout the apartment. This summer, driving through County Mayo, past the famine memorials, through vastly beautiful, rugged land that could almost speak to you about the bitterness buried beneath it, I came upon a bookshop. In it, I found a book about the Irish Civil War. And there, on page 56, I saw a picture of a mine exploded by retreating Republicans, which destroyed the Public Record Office and the rear of the Four Courts, and hung a cloud of smoke over the Liffey.