When John Blessing dies and leaves behind two small children, the loss reverberates across his extended family for years to come.

Three far-flung sisters come home to Martha's Vineyard one last time. Their mother's beach house is the only place any of them ever found true happiness and they need to begin the difficult process of letting go. Memories of their grandmother, mother, and their Irish father, who sailed away the year Dar turned twelve, rise up and expose the fine cracks in their family myth--especially when a cache of old letters reveals enough truth to send them back...

"It's fall 1987 and life as normal is ending for the Malone family. With their sterile Dallas community a far cry from the Irish-American Bronx of their youth, Pat and Anne Malone have reached a breaking point. Pat, faced with a debilitating MS diagnosis, has fallen into his drinking. Anne, his devoutly Catholic wife, is selected as a juror for a highly publicized murder trial, one that raises questions--about God, and about men in power--she has...

"A debut novel about the passionate loves and tragic losses of six generations of women in a family of firefighters, spanning from famine-era Ireland to Brooklyn a decade after 9/11 "There isn't anything in the world that hurts like a burn." No one knows the pain of a fire more than the women of the Keegan/O'Reilly clan. Kathleen Donohoe's stunning debut novel brings to life seven unsentimental, wry, and evocative portraits of women from a family...