(Hodder and Stoughton 2001. Coronet paperback 2002) Synopsis : Takes a hard look at community of unknown and unsung 19th. century women known as the Wrens who lived bleak, unforgiven lives on the Curragh of Kildare. Their story is told through the lives of Allie Buckley and Sarah Rooney, who themselves embody the divide in 19th. century Dublin, a city riven by the greed of an emerging middle class and the unspeakable poverty of the poor. As Wrens they live among prostitutes, ex-convicts, alcoholics, vagrants and unmarried mothers in nest-like shelters on the outskirts of the army camp. Excerpts : Opening excerpt August, l867. Dublin. The smells were the first thing. The heavy, fetid stench of animal sweat and fear and excrement, the evil smelling miasma from the river Liffey. ----The stink that was Dublin. ---- They were what made me feel, at last, that I was home. ---- 'Close up the window,' my father said. ---- His eyes, bloodshot and weary and watchful, were open again. He'd been asleep since leaving the North Wall, tired as I was after the journey from Paris. ---- 'There's a herd of cattle ahead of us,' he said, 'you'd no business unlatching it.' ---- 'I need air. The carriage is stifling,' I said. ----'You don't need what passes for air in this part of the town.' ---- His short, hairy fingers were clamped on his knees as he leaned forward. He smelled in need of a wash and of the wine he'd been drinking. ---- My poor father was not made for travelling; he'd slept on the train journeys between Paris and London and had been ill without stop on the boat crossings. Middle excerpt   Under a blue sky, driven by a simian carman and with James crying softly in Sarah's arms, we arrived to live among the wrens of the Curragh. It was the ape of a carman who told us the women were called wrens by the local people. I thought at first it was meant kindly: I still had some of my innocence in me then... The wren village was in a sheltered hollow, half hidden from the road. The carman would have had us walk the last stretch if Beezy Ryan hadn't threatened to drive his horse herself ---- I'd never seen women like the wrens before. Not even among the poorest... They stood staring at us; hardened, half-naked and unruly looking as the plains they lived on. One had a bad cut to her forehead. Their children were dirty. ---- A sandy-haired woman crawled on her hands and knees from an opening under a furze bush. ---- 'That's the sort of shelter ye'll be living in,' the carman said, 'that's a wren's nest.' As he reached for our bags I saw Beezy take the rings from her fingers and shove them into the long pockets of her skirts. The carman threw our bags to the ground and we climbed down after them. I grew an inch smaller as my heels sank into the spongy turf. ---- I'd given the last of my money to the carman. I'd made my bed. It was time to lie on it. Later excerpt  ---- I turned to look at him. I thought about gathering his beloved body against me until, by some miracle, the life that was mine might pass to him and he might breathe again. But I couldn't do this either so I touched his hands instead, where they'd been crossed on his chest by the hospital priest. The atheist in him would have hated the pose but rigor mortis had set in and there was nothing I could do about it. I would not break his bones. ---- I traced the outline of his mouth with my finger. I touched and tidied his hair back from his forehead. He'd have liked me to do such things when he was alive. I never had. ---- I closed my eyes, tightly, against the unbearable sight of him. Reviews :  "With Friends Indeed Doyle has taken on the challenge of weaving the fabric of a novel from some of the darker strands of 19th.-century Irish historical reality...She has written an accurate and fascinating novel with compelling irony. By the exercise of her imagination she has given voice to a group of outcast and despised women of whom the public would know very little." (Senator David Norris. The Irish Times.) "Beautifully written...enjoyable, entertaining, interesting, full of drama and unexpected twists." (Marian Keyes) Friends Indeed paints a vivid, historical picture, a moving portrait of two friends who find themselves falling through the chasms left by a widening gap between the working and middle classes. For the first time Rose Doyle investigates the reality behind the myth of the Wrens of the Curragh." (Anne Marie Flanagan. The Irish World. London) "...plenty of tragedy, as well as poverty, despair and some unexpected twists, but Rose Doyle's message is ultimately one of hope....well written and sensitively handled." (Sara Wilson. The Historical Novels Review. UK) "Beautifully written...illustrates the misery and bankruptcy of any social order where women are powerless" (Mary Ryan. 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