A Literary Mystery
Two days before she dies, his mother leans over and says — almost as an aside — “You might want to watch your drinking. You’re half Irish.”
A few weeks later, grief turns into curiosity, curiosity turns into a DNA test, and a DNA test turns into a plane ticket. What Phillip and his brother find on the windswept coast of Donegal is a father who left no forwarding address — and a family neither of them ever imagined.
The premise
A father who left no forwarding address. A family neither brother imagined.
Two days before she dies, Jenny Elliot leans over to her son Phillip and — almost as an aside — suggests that since he is half Irish, he might want to watch his drinking. Phillip is in his fifties. This is news to him.
Grief turns into curiosity. Curiosity turns into a DNA test. The DNA test turns into a plane ticket. Phillip drags his brother Spencer into a genetic treasure hunt — from the Long Island living rooms of their childhood to the windswept west coast of Ireland — in search of a biological father who left no forwarding address and, it turns out, a family neither of them ever imagined.
By the time they reach the sea cliffs of Donegal, the question has stopped being who was he? It has become something deeper, and harder to walk back from.
“If the people you came from are not the people you thought they were, are you still the person you thought you were?”
“The writing is knowing and engaging, wise about its cultural orientations, and driven to discoveries both reassuring and life-enhancing.”Michael Curtis Fiction Editor Emeritus, The Atlantic
The setting
Where the wind decides what you’re willing to know.
Donegal sits at the far northwest edge of Ireland: sea cliffs, fishing villages, single-track roads that disappear into fog. Communities where the people remember your father even when you don’t.
Wallach moves Phillip and Spencer through landscapes that were filed against him as travel assignments for thirty years — and uses every one of them. The result is a mystery told in a place that knows how to keep one.
Advance praise
What other writers said.
“Twists and turns like a double helix.”
Terri CheneyNew York Times bestselling author“A hilarious and witty novel — a book that asks, with real generosity, what makes us who we are.”
Robert K. BrighamHistorian, Vassar College“Knowing and engaging, wise about its cultural orientations, and driven to discoveries both reassuring and life-enhancing.”
Michael CurtisFiction Editor Emeritus, The Atlantic
Phillip and Spencer thought they knew where they came from. They were wrong.
Find out why — in one long flight, on a couch, with the wind off the Atlantic in the background.
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