Eveline sits in her room thinking about the people she has lost—her mother and her brother. Her other brother is traveling for work and she is afraid that her alcoholic father will beat her with no one else to turn on. She plans to run away with a sailor with whom she has fallen in love, but will a promise made to her mother keep her at home?

Critically acclaimed author James Joyce’s Dubliners is a collection of short stories depicting middle-class life in Dublin in the early twentieth century. First published in 1914, the stories draw on themes relevant to the time such as nationalism and Ireland’s national identity, and cement Joyce’s reputation for brutally honest and revealing depictions of everyday Irish life.