Father Declan de Loughry is told a story by Enda, wife of Kevin Dennehy, who has just died. Enda is reticent about divulging the whole story because it contains a sin. Father Declan considers the story whilst salmon-fishing.

“I’ll tell the all of it now, Father.”

BOOK SNAPS: The LA Times thought this was “a curious work; self-indulgent and somewhat awkward”, but this reader found it to be a simply told, but deep and heartfelt story. As Ann Patchett says it is “a deceptively simple story that resonates with the power of a modern-day myth”. And Kirkus agrees that it has “a quiet unpretentiousness of manner that successfully keeps melodrama at bay work together to make this a small polished stone of storytelling, though without doubt in a deeply well-worked vein. Slight but loving, and often commanding in its subtlety.”