Based upon the book, Colum wrote the lyrics for Clannad's song "TransAtlantic", released with the album Nádúr in September 2013.

It tells the intertwined stories of Alcock and Brown (the first non-stop transatlantic fliers in 1919), the visit of Frederick Douglass to Ireland in 1845/46, and the story of the Irish peace process as negotiated by Senator George Mitchell in 1998.

The book fuses these stories with fictional narratives of women spanning the course of two centuries.

Theo Tait in The Guardian commended McCann's skill as a writer though expressed concern at the plot becoming unwieldy in light of the many themes and story strands present in the novel.

[3][4] McCann discussed the novel on the BBC Radio 4 programme Bookclub in December 2015.