Told in the first person, as a narrative of her life over seventeen days, On Canaans Side is the heartbreaking story of a woman whose capability to love is enormous and whose compassion, even for those who have wronged her, is astonishing. Sebastian Barry returns with the extraordinary story of Lilly Bere. Forced to flee Ireland with her fiance as a teenager, under threat of death from the Irish Republican Army, Lilly discovers herself in America. Her rich and tragic life takes her from Chicago, where her fiance is brutally murdered, to Cleveland, where she marries and finds happiness even as she survives the Great Depression and World War II. Joyfully pregnant at forty-three, Lilly moves to Washington, DC, after her husband mysteriously disappears, where she finds work as a cook for one of the most prominent families in the country.
