An unnamed narrator details his life in Ireland during the mid-20th century. He describes his feelings of confusion and paranoia regarding the IRA (also known as the Irish Liberation Army), a group of sometimes violent zealots in Ireland. This boy belongs to a religious community, and he was raised to perceive events through a spiritual lens, and he describes his paranoia as a kind of demonic haunting.
Suddenly, we're in the story. It's 1945, and the boy is sitting on the staircase when his mother says she feels a ghost near the window, so the boy avoids it at all costs.
Then, we flash forward to 1949. The boy walks by a decrepit old distillery where his uncle was killed during a shootout with the cops. The instance led to many protests and riots, and no one has worked at the distillery since. The story about Eddie's death is put in question, but one interpretation is that he was a rat, executed by IRA forces.
In 1953, the boy's mother endured serious spells of depression and fugue states. Having always told the boy to interpret events through a spiritual lens, the boy becomes paranoid that his mother is being haunted or possessed. He decides silently that she seems guilty of something, probably for a mistake she made in her marriage to the boy's father. In the coming year, this strange realization helps the boy to move beyond his mother's superstitious religion, learning that religion is infinite and that many people have different kinds of faith.
Suddenly, his newfound perspective illumines the strange circumstances around his uncle Eddie's death. His family hates talking about Eddie, and over time, the boy feels ostracized by his family. Without anyone to ask, he begins piecing together the clues as honestly as he can. He decides that McIlhenny was guilty, not Eddie (of ratting) and that Eddie was killed wrongly. This is the only way he can make sense of his family's strange reaction to his questions.
