Irish Trilogy

A death in the present-a killing in the past. After twenty years away, Jo Devereux flies home to Ireland for her mother's funeral - the mother she hasn't spoken to for more than two decades. Every minute there reminds her of all the reasons she left and she has no desire to reacquaint herself with her home village. Or, with Rory O'Donovan, her lost love. Then, she reads her mother's will. Her inheritance is a chest full of letters and journals, written by her grandmother and great-aunt, that answer a long held secret. Who murdered her great-uncle in the Irish Civil War… and why? How did what an uprising for Irish freedom and independence degenerate into a bitter civil war where neighbor turned against neighbor, and family against family, leaving a legacy of lies, secrets, and silences for generations to come? As Jo unearths the bitter, buried history she shares with Rory, she finally understands why their love was doomed from the start. But, what about now? Can she stay true to both her heart and her heritage? She knows from her own life how the wild energy of rebellion can carry someone away... but what happens after the rising?

"A highly ambitious, engaging, and evocative novel and a hauntingly captivating read." -The Sunday Independent What happens when a woman is haunted by the sins of her foremothers and the men who betrayed them? Facing the birth of her child, and single motherhood, Jo Devereux has spent the last six months in Mucknamore, the Irish village she fled twenty years ago. A trunk of letters and diaries left by her grandmother and great-aunt has revealed a heartbreaking legacy of bitter secrets that have haunted the women of her family for four generations. Now she must find out the ultimate truth: What other secrets and lies lie under her mother's and grandmother's unshakeable silence? How does it connect with her failed life as a gender-bending agony aunt in San Franciso? And, what of Rory... her lost love, son of her family's sworn enemies? Will Jo's mission to uncover the past unlock a possible future together? Or, are they about to lose everything all over again? As she pieces together the poisonous fragments of the past, Jo must now face into the guilt and shame that were her legacy and see how she might best redeem them in her own life.

A love forbidden by family. A feud spanning generations. A woman still yearning for freedom. Twenty years after she was, driven away from her family and the only man she ever truly loved, Jo Devereux has returned to the small Irish village where she grew up. And, this time, she wants answers. What happened to her family during the Irish Civil War? Did her great-uncle's best friend really shoot him dead? And, what did this "war of the brothers" mean for mothers, sisters and daughters? Searching through papers bequeathed by her estranged mother, Jo uncovers astonishing truths about her grandmother and great-aunt, secrets of a cold-blooded murder with consequences that ricocheted down the generations into her own life. Urged on by Rory O'Donovan, her lost love and the son of her family's sworn enemies, Jo is tempted to reignite the fires of rebellion. Can she ever go back to the life she'd made for herself in San Francisco? Or, will what she's learning about her heritage incite her to cast off caution, and claim what should have been hers? In this heart-breaking saga about a young woman, her doomed lover, and the war-torn history that threatens to destroy their future as well as their past, you'll find almost 600 pages of romance, revenge and redemption by the bestselling and award-winning author Orna Ross.