A beautifully spare and touching Irish tale.
This beautifully spare and touching tale, set in 1985 Ireland, centers on a moral crisis of individuals and society. Bill Furlong, a coal merchant who has carefully built a business and family life after growing up as an orphan, begins to suspect that the powerful Catholic influence in the town harbors deep injustice. The nunnery that also runs a laundry business has been housing unwed mothers, but secretly using them as indentured servants who cannot escape the locked facility. As Bill stumbles upon an abused young woman who is trying to escape the facility, he is repeatedly warned by everyone from his wife to the local priest to “mind your own business.” Everything Bill has worked for is threatened if he follows his conscience and reveals what he knows.
The story draws on the actual scandal in Ireland and abuses by the Church, and will stir a reader’s heart and outrage. Bill is a fully realized character who shares the intimate unfolding of his own past and the difficult present, and the perfectly chosen details of small-town life and social strata keep it grounded.
Highly recommended.