On Canaan's Side

Told in the first person, as a narrative of her life over seventeen days, On Canaan's Side is the heartbreaking story of a woman whose capability to love is enormous and whose compassion, even for those who have wronged her, is astonishing.

Sebastian Barry returns with the extraordinary story of Lilly Bere. Forced to flee Ireland with her fiance' as a teenager, under threat of death from the Irish Republican Army, Lilly discovers herself in America. Her rich and tragic life takes her from Chicago, where her fiance' is brutally murdered, to Cleveland, where she marries and finds happiness even as she survives the Great Depression and World War II. Joyfully pregnant at forty-three, Lilly moves to Washington, DC, after her husband mysteriously disappears, where she finds work as a cook for one of the most prominent families in the country. Lilly follows the family to Bridgehampton, and there she raises her son, Ed, who at eighteen is called up to Vietnam and vanishes on his return to America. Mr. Nolan, a close friend, is dispatched to find him and returns from the Smoky Mountain wilderness not with Ed but with Ed's young son, Bill, whom Lilly will raise and adore--until tragedy strikes.