Maeve Kenny's life was going exactly as she'd planned. At 30 she was dating a soap opera star and had an exciting public relations career with an Irish-owned firm in Manhattan. Then three sudden events turned everything upside down, and Maeve found herself fleeing her Queens apartment for sanctuary back home upstate in Binghamton. As she tries to readjust to the dramatic changes in her life, Maeve says she needs a miracle to turn her life around. Who would have thought the whole world would be watching when it happens?

Irish newlyweds Fergal and Bridgeen Griffin receive an intriguing proposal for a wedding gift. Fergal's cousin, Colm, asks them to manage a Finger Lakes winery that he bought as an investment. They accept his gift of fate, but when they move upstate from Queens, see the run-down Keuka Lake property and meet its surly winemaker, they realize it will be quite a challenge getting from grapevine to bottle. Meanwhile, their best friends Maeve Kenny and Andy Krall face a challenge of their own - separation while he gets experimental cell therapy in Europe for paralysis sustained in a car crash. As...

In this loose parody of Dante's "Inferno," four Irish traditional musicians get lost in the backwoods of upstate New York the week before St. Patrick's Day. On the journey, the band descends through nine hellish circles of American-style 3/17 revelry: Step-dancing princesses. Bobbing shamrock headbangers. Green beer bacchanals. Shillelagh-wavin' geezers.

"Men like pie." Who would know the truth behind those words better than Elaina Brady's mother Maria? Months after she showed her teenage daughter how to bake perfect pie and hours after offering that culinary wisdom, Maria abandons Elaina, her sister Dee Dee and their father Walt. All it took was a lingering, lusty look from a Missoula trucker who stopped by their family's diner and ordered a slice of lemon meringue. Maria hitches a ride west with him, and with that impulsive decision, sixteen-year-old Elaina loses her mother and gains a job baking pies at the diner. A decade after Maria's...

Young Irish couple Fergal and Bridgeen Griffin didn't think that their cousin Colm O'Brien's wedding gift-managing a winery in New York's Finger Lakes for him-was charity. When the demise of the Celtic Tiger-Ireland's economic generator-threatens Colm's funding of Loughmare Winery, the Griffins realize suddenly how dependent their future is on his generosity. Colm sets a deadline for them to increase the winery's profit; it collides with the June wedding date of the Griffins' best friends, Maeve Kenny and Andy Krall. Unaware of the coming conflict, Maeve and Andy give the Griffins a barn owl...

By the confluence of the Susquehanna and Chenango rivers in New York's Southern Tier lies a verdant valley called the Triple Cities. The shoe factories that originally drew thousands of immigrants from across Europe have long moved on. What remains are the distinct ethnic flavors of a gritty community determined to overcome economic woes, adapt to the rapid changes in society and find true meaning in life. Consider these stories as pages ripped from a sketchbook. Some are quick studies; others are more detailed portraits inspired by observed characters, whispered gossip, overheard...