SEEKING A BETTER LIFE, Michael Haley fled Ireland, but in America he found only hard work, hardship, Civil War, and epidemics. His children's futures didn't start out brighter than what he'd left behind, as they suffered with him then, and later at the hands of others during the Reconstruction. In 1958, Ruby Haley received a letter from a distant uncle that told the story of her father, Robert, his sister Fannie, and their remarkable journey across the years. Based on these real-life ancestors; and using letters, documents, and newspaper clippings; RUNAWAY HALEY imagines what might have happened in the lives of two generations of the Haley family living in the Deep South during centuries past.