Between 1846 and 1851, more than one million people - the famine emigrants - sailed from Ireland to America. Never before had the world witnessed such an exodus. Now, 150 years later, The Famine Ships tells the story of the courage and determination of those who crossed the Atlantic in leaky, overcrowded sailing ships to make new lives for themselves, among them the child Henry Ford and twenty-six-year-old Patrick Kennedy, great-grandfather of John F. Kennedy.

Tracing the history of these years, The Famine Ships focuses principally on the poignant individual stories, such as that of a parish priest from Wexford who led eighteen families across the Atlantic and up the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers to found Wexford, Iowa, where their descendants still live.

Edward Laxton conducted five years of research in Ireland and among the immigrants' descendants in the United States and Canada to write this book. Superb color paintings by Rodney Charman, facsimile passenger lists, and reproductions of tickets are among the fascinating memorabilia represented in The Famine Ships.