After leaving home to join a religious community in 1930s Belgium, a young woman remembers her childhood on the west coast of Ireland. She reflects on the rituals of rural life, the people she encountered, and the enchanting beauty of the landscape. As the impressions of her former home intensify, the woman's mind turns to the shocking event that led to her departure. Boldly constructed in second-person narration, this 1970 novel from David Cohen Literary Prize laureate Edna O'Brien won a Yorkshire Post Book Award, and lends a new perspective on the mysterious hold that her native land exerts on its inhabitants.