While fishing in an Irish salmon stream one rainy morning, Father Declan de Loughry ponders the recent deathbed confession of his parishioner, Kevin Dennehy. It seems Dennehy and his wife, Enda, had been quietly living a lie for fifty years. Yet the gravity of their deception doesn’t become clear to the good father until Enda shares the full tale of her suffering, finally confiding “the all of it.”

Jeannette Haien’s exquisite first novel is a deceptively simple story that resonates with the power of a modern-day myth—an unforgettable narrative of transgression, empathy, and, ultimately, absolution.