Told in the first person, this narrative of Lilly Bere's life over seventeen days opens as she mourns the loss of her grandson. Lilly revisits her past, going back to the moment she was forced to flee Ireland at the end of World War I, and continues her tale in America, a world filled with hope and danger. At once epic and intimate, her story unfolds as Lilly tries to make sense of the sorrows and troubles of her life and of the people whose lives...

"My father and mother should have stayed in New York where they met and I was born. Instead, they returned to Ireland when I was four ... When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I managed to survive at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood." So begins the...

A woman and man, parted a quarter of a century, reunite in a bar in New Orleans as the St Patrick's Day parade goes by. A divorced suburban dad helps his daughter pick out a card for her friend who's moving away. A group of friends in late middle age, all once promising, reunite for dinner when one of their number loses her husband, but the gathering splinters when bitter revelations about their shared past emerge. Two teenage boys sit in a drive-in,...

San Sebastian, Spain. Dublin pathologist Quirke is struggling to relax, despite the beaches, cafés and the company of his lovely wife. When he glimpses a familiar face in the twilight at Las Acadas bar, he knows it can't be April Latimer-- she was murdered by her brother, years ago. When Quirke makes a call back home to Ireland, Detective St. John Strafford is dispatched to Spain. But he is not the only one en route: A relentless hit man is on the...

In his first work of nonfiction, bestselling novelist James Webb tells the epic story of the Scots-Irish, a people whose lives and worldview were dictated by resistance, conflict, and struggle, and who, in turn, profoundly influenced the social, political, and cultural landscape of America from its beginnings through the present day.
More than 27 million Americans today can trace their lineage to the Scots, whose bloodline was stained by centuries...