The next chapter is the "Now" and we meet a young single mom who has just learned her mom has passed. She's a single mother raising her 17 year old son and dealing with the fall out of her marriage still. In clearing out her mother's wardrobe Elizabeth comes across a wooden box containing letters from her father whom she knows very little about. Maybe he needs a better editor as well, as there were so many points that could have used further explanation while working on the timeline. It's been a long time since Elizabeth has been in the town that that she grew up in and being back fills her with a mixture of emotions.

You will be surprised at many points, and you will carry on reading because you want to know what happened as much as Elizabeth does. This novel will never be nominated for grand literary prizes, but I believe it makes an enjoyable read for those who like a good story with twists and turns. While I certainly understood Elizabeth's quest for information, I felt she was a fairly impulsive character. Following her mother’s death home in Ireland, Elizabeth travels to Buncarragh where she has inherited her childhood home.Graham William Walker is an Irish actor, comedian, television presenter and columnist, known by his stage name Graham Norton. She is dealing w/the loss of her mom and also with her teen son, whose situation is complicated because she is raising him alone. It’s a sad and lovely book, brimful of tenderness and compassion, where the revelations of the past upturn the perceptions of the present. the TIMES'A compelling and moving story, expertly told, that will draw you in and keep you in its grip until the last page.

As she clears out her mother’s personal effects, she discovers a bundle of letters that appear to be from the father she has never known. Compelling, well-written with a great eye for human foibles it is undoubtedly highly readable but for me lacked substance and there isn’t much more to the novel than what becomes pretty obvious early on. The sense of Patricia’s isolation as a single parent in 1970s rural Ireland is sensitively handled, while in both the present and past sections, the politics of small-town communities are captured with insight and precision. Elizabeth is left reeling as she delves in her mother's life, her unsettling romance with her father, Edward Foley, a farmer living in a remote area by the sea. Forty years earlier, a young woman stumbles from a remote stone house, the night quiet except for the constant wind that encircles her as she hurries deeper into the darkness away from the cliffs and the sea.

It is a mesmerizing read and so unexpected ,had no idea what would happen and it was all alarming and upsetting and yet i could not put it down. But nobody seems to know anything about Edward Foley, and the deeper she digs she discovers that she knows nothing about where she came from.

I just think that there were too many things happening and that Norton didn't make sure that both POVs worked well. He then secured a prime time slot on Channel 4 with his chat shows So Graham Norton and V Graham Norton . I had a couple of “eye roll” moments with this book, and I noticed several detail oversights, but this was an excellent read for me. It's a bit of a roller coaster of discoveries and reveals, balancing between darkness and kindness all the way. We certainly didn't see it coming and when it arrives it will knock the chair right out from under you.

The POVs between Patricia and Elizabeth and the mini POVs for Edward and Rosemary just didn't hang together well. As for Elizabeth, “back in New York, she had felt guilty for not missing her mother more, but in this house she felt her absence like a physical ache”. the story of Elizabeth coming back to ireland and discovering truths about her own past and family gripped me tight.