Walk the Blue Fields: Stories

Claire Keegan’s brilliant debut collection,Antarctica, was aLos Angeles TimesBook of the Year, and earned her resounding accolades on both sides of the Atlantic. Now she has delivered her next, much-anticipated book,Walk the Blue Fields, an unforgettable array of quietly wrenching stories about despair and desire in the timeless world of modern-day Ireland. In the never-before-published story "The Long and Painful Death,” a writer awarded a stay to work in Heinrich Böll’s old cottage has her peace interrupted by an unwelcome intruder, whose ulterior motives only emerge as the night progresses. In the title story, a priest waits at the altar to perform a marriage and, during the ceremony and the festivities that follow, battles his memories of a love affair with the bride that led him to question all to which he has dedicated his life; later that night, he finds an unlikely answer in the magical healing powers of a seer.
A masterful portrait of a country wrestling with its past and of individuals eking out their futures,Walk the Blue Fieldsis a breathtaking collection from one of Ireland’s greatest talents, and a resounding articulation of all the yearnings of the human heart.