Roseanne was born in Sligo, Ireland. She now lives in Roscommon General’s a mental hospital, which is managed by Dr. Grene—a man whom she thinks resembles St. Thomas. Roseanne is very old, but she doesn’t know her age. She decides one day to write an account of her life, using an inkwell filled with blue biro ink that Dr. Grene has given her.

Roseanne’s long-deceased and beloved father, Joe Clear, spent much of his life working in a graveyard for Catholics, where he was superintendent. Joe Clear was a Presbyterian, which made him an outlier in Sligo. He also sang operettas and rode a motorbike. In his free time, Joe Clear read old sermons by John Donne and Sir Thomas Browne. When he was young, he sailed with the British Merchant Marine and entered “every port in Christendom before he was seventeen” (16). While staying at his favorite boarding house in Southampton, he met Cissy, a chambermaid. Cissy was a dark-haired, dark-skinned beauty with emerald-green eyes.

While she was growing up, Joe Clear told Roseanne many stories. One of them was about how he went to another boarding house after being unable to find a bed in his favorite one.