First published 2022
Cushla teaches seven-year-old children who casually discuss petrol bombs and rubber bullets. This is Northern Ireland, where car bombs make the daily news and men turn up beaten or dead on dark streets. Nothing seems unusual about the February night when Michael Agnew walks into her family's pub wearing his white shirt. He's married, he's from Belfast, but when their eyes meet, something shifts between them. Their affair begins as the violence creeps closer to home. Seamie McGeown finds himself alone on the wrong street. Davy forgets his coat on the wrong day. Small choices cascade into tragedy. Cushla crosses lines she never imagined she would cross. The town's tensions rise like a fever, threatening everything she's trying to protect. In a place where love and violence walk hand in hand, Cushla must decide what she's willing to risk for a man who can never fully be hers.
Genres: romance, literary-fiction, historical-fiction, contemporary
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: enemies-to-lovers, forbidden-love
Setting: Northern Ireland, Belfast
Period: 1970s
309 pages · Hardcover · Bloomsbury
Content warnings: violence