Sweet Old World

Synopsis

Irish-Australian David Quinn has finished with rescuing women. He's written a book that has helped to prove a woman innocent of murder, but he's not feeling good about it. He's disappointed, sick at heart. But it's different when his sister needs him, when she calls from her home on a remote, windswept island in the Atlantic: he closes the door on his life and travels to the western edge of Europe to be with her. It's summer on the Irish island of Inishmore, and the tourists are arriving. They're coming for the wild beauty and the five thousand years of history, the Celtic legends and the burial sites of saints. They're coming for the drink and the sex and the craic. Seventeen-year-old Edie has come from Fremantle, on the west coast of Australia. On harsh Inishmore, where people have struggled for centuries to survive, Edie too is fighting for life, although her fight is with the landscape of her own mind. David Quinn just wants to get on with his new existence on the island; working on a new book, helping his sister. But when Edie tumbles dangerously into his life, against all his wishes he must reach out to catch her, not knowing that, in doing so, he could lose everything. Set among the ancient stories of the haunting Aran Islands, this is a love story about physical and emotional wounds, and the hope we all have for healing. It is a novel about modern minds and bodies, and the very new forms of courage that may be required to live modern lives.