The book uses archival data to examine how access to micro-finance credit played a role in facilitating adjustment to blight during the Great Famine of Ireland.

The author argues that the worst affected districts with a microfinance fund experienced substantially smaller population declines and larger increases in buffer livestock during the famine than those districts without a fund. The potentially limited capacity of credit access to mitigate the effects of a major environmental shock on the poorest, most vulnerable borrowers is also a key topic of discussion.

parts of chapters 2 and 3, and 4 have also been published in companion articles in the Journal of Development Economics and the World Bank Economic Review.