In the wake of the 1916 Easter Rising, a married schoolteacher in a small Irish village has an affair with a troubled British officer.

Thomas Crimmins is a new warder, or guard, in an Irish prison. He is young, naive, and idealistic, determined to serve his country by his part in meting out justice to criminals. His superior, Regan, however, realizes that even prisoners are human beings, and Regan is sick of the eye-for-an-eye attitude that leads the state to execute condemned men, or "quare fellows." Crimmins begins to see that not all is black and white in his new world, and when he becomes involved with Kathleen, the wife of one of the condemned men, his attitude begins to change. When new evidence arises to suggest that Kathleen's husband may not deserve his fate, Crimmins is torn between his duty and his humanity.

Friel contrasts Gar's cloistered emotional life with his gregarious social persona by portraying him as two distinct characters, a public self (Donal McCann) and a private self (Des Cave).

When his father becomes a bomb victim, Jimmy leaves Belfast for his uncle’s farm in remote west Ireland. But even here there are links to the past.