Mary Beth Keane attended Barnard College and earned an MFA from the University of Virginia. A winner of the Chicago Tribune's Nelson Algren Prize and a Pushcart Prize nominee, she lives in Philadelphia.

Greta Cahill never believed she would leave her village in the west of Ireland until she found herself on a ship bound for New York. Once landed in America, Greta falls in love, raises her own family, and earns her own living.

She longs to return to Ireland, to show her family what she has made of herself, but a secret in her past forces her to keep her life in New York separate and tears her from the people she holds closest. Even fifty years later, when the Ireland of her memory bears little resemblance to that of the present day, she fears she will lose everything she has made for herself when she discovers that her children-with the best of intentions-have conspired to unite the worlds she's so carefully kept apart.