The people who talk about their lives in this book represent a creative, dissident Ireland. They are artists, writers, map-makers, weavers, water-diviners, teachers, environmentalists, farmers, wood-cutters, gardeners, travellers and monks. Some continue ways of life that have existed for generations; others have chosen to live and work in ways that are experimental, exploratory, and always singular. The choices they have made prompt us to reflect on our own choices. These thirty-two portraits in word and image provide an alternative view of the possibilities of life in Ireland, and a bracing antidote to the banalities of the consumer society.