In 1845, a black American slave lands in Ireland to champion ideas of democracy and freedom, only to find a famine ravaging the countryside and the poor suffering from hardships that astonish even him. In 1919, two brave young airmen emerge from the carnage of the First World War to pilot the first non-stop transatlantic flight, from Newfoundland to the west of Ireland. And in 1998, an American senator crosses the ocean to shepherd Northern Ireland’s notoriously volatile peace talks to an uncertain conclusion.