"A tale of doomed love, set against the backdrop of Ireland's troubles. Brutally pessimistic and agonisingly romantic, Pat Gray's novel recaptures the spirit of a lost Ireland." It follows the fortunes of an English family, stranded in the apparent backwater of Ulster at the end of the Second World War. Bernard, the flawed and eccentric father, who was injured in the war, Eileen his wife, and their three children, all are torn apart as the troubles engulf them.