December Bride

perhaps the best novel about Northern Ireland life which has yet appeared Irish Timesa quiet, compassionate story New York TimesSarah Gomartin, the servant girl on Andrew Echlins farm on Strangford Lough in County Down, bears a child by one of Andrews sons. But which one? Her steadfast refusal over many years to bend and contrive things by choosing one of the brothers reverberates through the puritan Presbyterian community, alienating clergy and neighbours, hastening her mothers death and casting a cold shadow on the lives of her children.A story of love, scandal, and restrictive social mores, December Bride is a classic novel of Ulster life by one of the twentieth-centurys greatest writers, and was made into a major motion picture starring Ciaran Hinds.