Claire, five-year-old daughter of Irish doctors, Connie and Liam, dies suddenly in 1963. The novel follows the devastation in the family - consequences that reverberate over the next fifty years. There's the shock as Connie deserts Liam and their children and the mystery of the pact she makes with Anne, a Catholic nun. All who witnessed the child's death, even the youngest, feel responsible and have their own stories as they leave home, reject religion, start careers.
Connie's ambivalence about mothering seems to follow the next generation of women. One cousin, most deeply affected, tries to escape the past as she takes up work in Nigeria. Do her choices repeat Connie's actions? And to whom does it fall to fulfil the pact Connie made fifty years before?
A heartbreaking story of motherhood and the limitations of love.
