Showing results by author "Cathy Mansell" in All Categories

It's 1943 and Ireland has escaped the worst of the war raging in Europe, but life is not without its hardships. When fire breaks out at the convent in Cavan where she has spent the past 10 years, orphan Eva Fallon barely escapes with her life. She's offered a bed for the night by Ma Scully, whilst her nephew Cathal, visiting from Dublin, helps battle the blaze. Seventeen-year-old Eva has never known such kindness, but she's too proud to take advantage and finds a job at Blackstock's farm, setting in motion a chain of events that will change her life forever.

In 1950s Dublin, life is hard and jobs are like gold dust. Nineteen-year-old Nell Flynn is training to be a nurse and planning to marry her boyfriend, Liam Connor, when her mother dies, leaving her younger sisters destitute. To save them from the workhouse, Nell returns to the family home - a mere two rooms at the top of a condemned tenement. Nell finds work at a biscuit factory and, at first, they scrape through each week.

On her deathbed, Aileen's mother reveals a secret she has kept for 18 years, and pleads with her daughter to fulfil a last wish. Torn by grief, Aileen leaves Dublin, the Fair City, and Dermot, the man she has grown to love. Lonely and vulnerable, she unwittingly befriends a salesman at the seed mill where she has found work. Suddenly, her life is in danger. On a visit back to Dublin, Aileen discovers a devastating truth. When she finally decides to return to Dermot, and the family she loves, will the secret she too is now hiding tear her and Dermot apart?