A River in the Trees

• Dramatic Rights: Available
• Setting: 1920s Ireland and present-day London and Ireland.
• Vibe: Can we ever go back to the start? An extraordinary portrait of two women, in vastly different time periods and circumstances, both somehow stuck, A RIVER IN THE TREES looks at the choices we have and what we do with those choices, as well as the secrets and lies families preserve over generations.

In 1920, as the Irish War of Independence rages beyond her family farm, Hannah is nineteen and restless, waiting for her life to begin.

In present day London, Ellen feels as if hers has ended. She’s had miscarriage after miscarriage and has grown apart from both her husband and her family in Ireland. She’s also bored, and when she finds out that the old family farm in West Cork has come up for sale, she goes to Ireland to buy it.

Ellen has been brought up on tales of the heroism of her grandmother’s aunt, Hannah. And in Hannah’s story she sees some echo of her own: when Hannah left for America she was never heard from again, was written out of the family history, made a ghost. And so, Ellen decides to rewrite her own story in the way Hannah was unable to, going back to before everything went wrong, the farmhouse in West Cork. Hannah’s narrative unfolds as Ellen’s does, and when her father offers three freedom fighters refuge in their attic, her story explodes.

 

UK Publisher: riverrun (Quercus)