Rose Dunlea is slow. At least that is what she being constantly told by the Sisters at school in Halifax during the early 1900s. She's been held back twice now and if she fails again, next year she'll be in the same class as Winnie, her younger sister. Although the war against Germany seems far away, her most pressing fears are the words that inexplicably tumble together on the page whenever she tries to read them. They don't make sense to her. Isolated from her schoolmates and ashamed of her inability to read, Rose tries to escape into her Mam's Irish Chain quilt, a handmade emblem of the family's past, laden with love. But when that doesn't help, Rose desperately prays to God so that she doesn't have to go to school anymore. Exactly one day later on December 6, 1917, two ships explode in Halifax's harbor, resulting in the greatest human tragedy Canada has ever seen. Rose's life changes forever, and she's sure it's all her fault.

A stunned and grief-stricken Rose draws on the heroic stories of her great-grandmother stitched into the Irish Chain quilt to find her own courage and inner strength. Irish Chain is a beautifully moving story about awakening the gifts within.