Changes

''Days Without End'' continues Sebastian Barry's tracing of Irish families the Dunnes and the McNultys over generations and settings. In ''Days Without End'' he explores the cultural relationship between Ireland and the United States to devastating effect. It's the mid nineteenth century and Thomas McNulty has left his home in Sligo, his family dead from famine, to make a new life in a new nation. He teams up with ''prairie fairy'' - a dancer in drag - John Cole and together they sign up for the US Army. Their journey will take them through the American Indian wars and eventually to the Civil War. Along the way, the two soldiers form a lasting bond with a young Sioux girl called Winona and their travels take them from Missouri to Wyoming and Tennessee. It's the story of perhaps the most violent birth of a nation in history but it's also a convention-defying love story.