Nightlines

As Donal Gore awaits his execution in a Madrid prison during the Spanish Civil War, he is sustained by memories of setting fishing lines on the beach with his father back home in Ireland. Gradually, as he remembers, the events that brought him to a foreign cell emerge: the personal and political betrayals that are his heritage - and, it seems, his destiny. Released from prison by a German officer, who expects political intelligence in return, Donal returns to his windswept home on the Irish coast to find his once powerful father dramatically changed. The moving and magical heart of the novel explores the hopeless inability of Donal and his father to communicate with each other - until the father is literally beyond language. At the same time Nightlines centers on the poignant, intolerable triangular relationship that develops between father, son, and Rose, Donal's beautiful young stepmother.