“My mother was never easy in the world of houses. She was a tinker, a traveler girl who had married a wealthy man. Her name was Agatha Sheehy….There are silences all around my mother’s story.” So begins The Nature of Water and Air, set on a patch of Irish coast where, amid a flurry of whispers, we meet Agatha’s only surviving daughter, Clodagh. Determined to secure her mother’s elusive love … elusive love and the truth about her, Clodagh is swept into a relationship with a handsome, isolated man. He brings her to the heart of her mother’s story, where she must confront the questions “Does a truth change love?” and “What madness will come from chasing a secret?”
Powerfully sensitive, this startling debut novel about forbidden love will place Regina McBride among our most celebrated novelists.
more
** spoiler alert ** The sea that surrounds the Irish lands is a place rich with mystery and mythology. Regina McBride interweaves the celtic culture with the hopelessly beautiful myth of the selkie in her book The Nature of Water and Air. According to Irish lore, Selkies are magical seals who, when on land, shed their skins and become human. A …