Dark Rosaleen

Dark Rosaleen is Michael Nicholson's novel of the Great Irish Famine, built around the true historical figure of Charles Trevelyan, Secretary of the Treasury and the official most associated with Britain's failed and often callous famine relief policy. The novel imagines Trevelyan's daughter, Kathryn, growing up largely insulated from the catastrophe unfolding across Ireland.

As the extent of the famine's devastation becomes undeniable, Kathryn's sympathies shift decisively away from her father's politics. She joins the Irish underground, steals food for starving families, and becomes involved with the leader of a rebellion against British rule — placing her in direct opposition to her own family and country.

Written by a veteran war correspondent, the novel combines documented history with an invented love story to dramatize one of the defining tragedies of nineteenth-century Ireland and the political failures that deepened it.