trespasses

Set in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, a shattering novel about a young woman caught between allegiance to community and unsanctioned love. Amid daily reports of sectarian violence, Cushla is living a quiet life with her mother in a small town near Belfast. By day she teaches at a parochial school, and at night she fills in at her family’s pub. It’s there that she meets Michael Agnew, a barrister who’s made a name for himself defending IRA members. Against her better judgment – Michael is not only Protestant but older, and married – Cushla lets herself get drawn in by him and his sophisticated world, and an affair ignites. Then the father of a student is savagely beaten, setting in motion a chain reaction that will threaten everything, and everyone, Cushla most wants to protect.   As tender as it is unflinching, Trespasses is a heart-pounding, heart-rending drama of thwarted love and irreconcilable loyalties, in a place what you come from seems to count more than what you do, or whom you cherish.