Sebastian Barry

On Canaan's Side Sebastian Barry

Lilly Bere, forced to flee Ireland with her fiancé as a teenager under threat of death from the IRA, finds herself in America. Soon, her rich and tragic life takes her from Chicago, where her fiancé 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. She 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. A close friend is dispatched to find him and returns from the Smoky Mountain wilderness not with Ed but with Ed's son, Bill, whom Lilly will raise and adore-until tragedy strikes.