''Say Nothing'''s subject is [[The Troubles]] in [[Northern Ireland]], with the 1972 [[murder of Jean McConville|abduction and murder of Jean McConville]] as a central focus. The book describes the lives of [[Dolours Price]], [[Brendan Hughes]], [[Gerry Adams]], and Jean McConville's children. Through these figures, the bookit offers a history of the Troubles as a whole: the [[Northern Ireland civil rights movement|civil rights movement]] and the turn to violence at the end of the 1960s, the [[Provisional IRA]]'s bombing campaign, the [[1981 Irish hunger strike|1981 hunger strike]], the peace process and the opposition it faced within the republican movement, and the post-conflict struggle to understand crimes like McConville's murder. The book also details the efforts of the [[Belfast Project]] to research and investigate the events of the conflict. Keefe began researching and writing the book after reading the obituary for [[Dolours Price]] in 2013.<ref name="Rolling Stone">{{cite magazine|last=Kroll|first=Andy|date=February 26, 2019|title=Terrorism, Torture and 3,600 Lives Lost: Revisiting 'the Troubles' in Northern Ireland|url=https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/troubles-northern-ireland-say-nothing-book-797343/|magazine=[[Rolling Stone]]|access-date=10 October 2019|archive-date=31 August 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190831051901/https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/troubles-northern-ireland-say-nothing-book-797343/|url-status=live}}</ref>
