Description
Set against the stark and haunting beauty of a mid-nineteenth-century Irish peninsula, this masterpiece follows a family navigating the profound echoes of historical trauma and displacement. The story opens in 1865, a period when Ireland is still reeling from the devastating and tragic aftermath of the Great Hunger. Tomás and his observant ten-year-old son, Liam, are painstakingly traversing a windswept coastline while working for the British Empire’s massive Ordnance Survey project to systematically map out the entire nation.
While the official mandate demands absolute geometric precision, Tomás is quietly driven by a deeply personal vow to ensure his maps serve as an enduring, undeniable record of his country’s ruin. Their complex mission takes a shocking turn when Tomás encounters something deeply unsettling inside a secluded copse of trees, fracturing his fragile mental state and leaving his young son terrified. Suddenly thrust into a position of immense responsibility, young Liam must muster the resilience to complete the mapping expedition independently and somehow guide his broken father home. Seamlessly merging historical realism with atmospheric, almost ghostly overtones, this evocative novel unfolds as a spellbinding meditation on historical inheritance, colonisation, and the invisible threads that tie generations to the soil.
