The Element of Fire

From the author of the acclaimed The Whitest Flower comes the story of an unforgettable heroine, Ellen Rua O'Malley. Widowed by Ireland's Great Famine, she has fled her native land for Boston taking with her her two surviving children, Patrick and Mary, and the 'silent girl' rescued from the hordes of the dispossessed. Boston in the 1850s is the hub of the universe: gateway to America's temples of commerce and learning; liberal, sophisticated -- the very best place in all of the New World for a woman to be. There, awaiting Ellen, are the stability of a new life and Lavelle, the man who loves her. But Ellen, desperate to shake off the Old World, is driven by her own demons to put everything at risk. And Boston, on the brink of Civil War, seems only to mirror her own conflict, to sound the knell of her own battle for survival. A powerful and compelling tale of lives and loves dislocated, The Element of Fire captures emotions as timeless as life. And love.

Born in County Tipperary in 1945, Brendan Graham's debut novel `The Whitest Flower' (Nov 1998), became a No.2 Bestseller in Ireland as well as attracting widespread international acclaim. Translated into a number of languages it is also a required text at Boston's Massachusetts Institute of Technology for the course `Women, Storytelling and Performance'.