Lisa Ard

are back where you started with a full glass once

), and story tangents... all, I think, to convey a 1960s Irish town. But once I committed

are back where you started with a full glass once

), and story tangents... all, I think, to convey a 1960s Irish town. But once I committed, I found myself invested in the characters and this quiet story of love and humanity.

When a babe is found on the church steps, a doctor and his daughter take her in. The baby sparks a love between the three of them that leads to desperate acts to keep her despite the laws of the church and government.

Phrases like the following kept me going:

the purpose of ageing was to grow into your soul, the one you have been carrying all along

and

He did not know if he believed in the Holy Spirit, but if asked he would have said that night was the closest he came, that there was an otherness, a largeness apparent and invisible there at the same time, something that did not exist in the textbooks but was the same thing that had been since the beginning, which was that there was something more than the perimeter of flesh, something else and beyond explanation, and which was felt in that part of us that, for lack of any better, was given the word soul.

And I'm glad I did, for this story is filled with love and misconceptions, fear and trust, plus one man's renewed faith in humankind.