This is not your typical girl in trouble and on the run story. While those elements are there, the move from America to Ireland and the atmosphere it evokes, makes the story feel original. There have been many stories addressing issues of child and drug abuse, trafficking, and threats of violence and displacement. This makes it difficult to find fresh ways of telling that story. Author Charleen Hurtubise has done this beautifully. 

I was immersed from the very beginning. The characters felt very real and the protagonist, Saoirse, though complex and broken, was able not only to survive but to love deeply despite that origin story.

Born to a drug addicted mother, teenager Sarah has long suffered at the hands of her violent stepfather, Lou, who abused her and forced her into criminal enterprise.  When she realizes the danger she is in because of what her stepfather coerced her to do, she had to run for her life.

Sarah travels  from Michigan to Boston and becomes a nanny along with another girl her age. Also named Sara, she resembles our protagonist. When she happens upon a news article that implicates her in several murders, she steals the other Sara’s identity and flees to Ireland.

As the story develops, Sarah who ironically takes the name Saroise (meaning freedom in Irish, an optimistic aspiration) sits next to Paul, a young Irish medical student on the plane to Dublin. She has pretty good instincts and senses something off about him. But given her limited options agrees to go home with him. What else can she do with no resources? Desperate, she moves in with his less than welcoming family (except his congenial father).  She makes one unfortunate mistake which will tie her to this boorish man and his cold family. What will it take for her to break free from them?

Things become very complicated for her but ultimately she is able to leave Paul and live simply with a man, Daithi, whom she deeply loves. They live in a remote setting in coastal Donegal in a house Daithi built. Saoirse is finally happy and thrives as a painter, diligent in her need to stay hidden. But when she wins a prestigious art prize, the quiet life she treasures begins to unravel.

The characters are all real and shaded with their own back stories. I would have thought the family she moved in with were over the top in their lack of empathy and cruel assumptions but having recently read Colm Toibin’s Long Island, he draws a similar picture.  Dahti, her love, balances the behavior of the irritating Paul, with his tenderness and belief in the good in people.  Minor characters such as Seamus, Charlotte, and even the cold hearted Vivienne add to the texture of life in both Donegal and Dublin. Saorise, herself, has a kaleidoscope of traits that will either save her or demolish the world she has carefully created.

This is writer and artist Charlene Hurtubise’s debut novel. It has been compared to the books of Clare Keegan and Colm Toibin, very prominent Irish novelists. As I was reading it, I thought it most resembled Maggie O’Farrell’s book, This Must Be the Place. It had the dreamy Irish coast in a hidden house as the place for Daniel and Claudette to fall in love and raise their children as he plot thickens. Another recommended read.

This tale is a journey of reinvention as a means of survival.The lush descriptions left me wanting to book a flight. I highly recommend it.

Many thanks to Netgalley and  Celadon Books ( a division of MacMillan) for the opportunity to read and  honestly review this advanced reading copy.