From one of Ireland's most talented journalists, an extraordinary fiction debut, compelling, colourful and romantic. Kathleen is a 49-year-old travel writer, an Irishwoman based in London who has not been back to Ireland since she was twenty. Her home is her office, her family and friends a few close colleagues. She has not experienced passion since she was young. When, over the course of a few weeks, the props of her life fall away one after another, it is to passion that she turns - not in her own life, but in the fragmentary account of a scandalous affair in 19th century rural Ireland, between the wife of a big Anglo-Irish landlord, and her servant. And so Kathleen is drawn back to Ireland, to see whether she can find out more...