When Light Is Like Water

'There are few things on earth smaller than this country.'

Alice, a young American on her travels, arrives in the West of Ireland with no plans and no strong attachments - except to her beloved mother, who raised her on her own. She falls in love with an Irishman, marries him, and settles down in a place whose codes she struggles to crack. And then, in the course of a single hot summer, she embarks on an affair that breaks her marriage and sets her life on a new course.

After years working in war zones around the world, and in the immediate aftermath of her mother's death, Alice finds herself back in Ireland and contemplating the forces that led her to put down roots and then tear them up again. What drew her to her husband, and what pulled her away? Was her husband strangely complicit in the affair? Was she always under surveillance by friends and neighbours who knew more than they let on?

When Light is Like Water is at once a gripping story of passion and ambivalence and a profound
meditation on the things that matter most: the definition of love, the value of family and the meaning of home.

Molly McCloskey, a native of Portland, Oregon, is the acclaimed author of three
previous works of fiction, and of a memoir, Circles around the Sun. After many
years in Ireland, she now lives in Washington, DC.