Sister Genevieve was headmistress of a large Catholic girls comprehensive in a Republican stronghold on the Falls, in Belfast, from the 1960s to the 1980s. This book is both an inspiring portrait of a school and how a teacher can take children from a deprived background and give them new horizons and opportunities, and a poignant look at the human dimension to the Troubles. Some of Sister Genevieve's girls make it to Cambridge University in spite of tremendous obstacles, others join the IRA. Bombs are part of the routine of school life and Sister Genevieve has to steer a careful course between educating the girls and keeping in with their parents, many of them members of Sinn Fein. John Rae's biography tells the unusual story of a remarkable woman.