Young Gabriel Walsh has been uprooted from his poverty-stricken life in Dublin and transplanted to a castle in Tarrytown, New York State. This reversal of fortune has come about through Margaret Burke Sheridan, a retired opera diva who in her prime sang at La Scala and was Puccini's favourite Madame Butterfly. Having met the boy at Dublin's Shelbourne Hotel where he worked as a waiter, Maggie persuaded her wealthy American patrons, Ruth and Emerson Axe, to become his guardians and take him to America.In Tarrytown Castle Gabriel finds himself living in a kind of limbo, situated as he is somewhere between being family and servant, between Irish and American culture. He encounters new experiences such as going to high school, the theatre, the opera and meets and dines with many renowned figures in his new home. Gabriel soon discovers that his guardians have an ambition for him to inherit their highly successful financial business. His future reeks of wonderful...

The son of dysfunctional and destitute parents secures employment as a member of the morning breakfast staff in Dublin's Shelbourne Hotel. The job affords the boy a respite from his father's profound apathy and his mother's obsession with religion. His father Paddy, an ex-British army soldier, considers his marriage to Molly to be a greater threat to his existence than his life and death struggles in the trenches during the Great War. Molly considers her life with the unemployed Paddy and ten children a crucifixion that will ensure her a place in Heaven among her favourite martyrs. In the Shelbourne, the boy encounters Margaret Burke Sheridan, a retired opera diva who in her prime sang at La Scala and Covent Garden. She was Puccini's favourite Madame Butterfly and a protégé of Marconi, the inventor of the radio. In her present sad and lonely retirement Maggie is considered just a thorn in the side of the hotel staff. But one morning, when the new breakfast boy attempts to...