My mother was never easy in the world of houses. She was a tinker, a traveler girl who had married a wealthy man. Her name was Agatha Sheehy....There are silences all around my mother's story. So begins The Nature of Water and Air, set on a patch of Irish coast where, amid a flurry of whispers, we meet Agatha's only surviving daughter, Clodagh. Determined to secure her mother's elusive love and the truth about her, Clodagh is swept into a relationship with a handsome, isolated man. He brings her to the heart of her mother's story, where she must confront the questions "Does a truth change love?" and "What madness will come from chasing a secret?" Powerfully sensitive, this startling debut novel about forbidden love will place Regina McBride among our most celebrated novelists. This debut novel, set on the wild cliffs of the Irish coast, is the story of young Clodagh and her mysterious mother, Agatha, who was raised a tinker (traveling gypsy) but who was rumored to be a selkie, a mythical Irish creature from the sea a seal turned human temptress. Agatha had married a wealthy young man and bore him twin girls, of which Clodagh is the surviving child. As Clodagh grows into womanhood, she tries to unravel her mother's secrets, becoming involved with a captivating tinker man named Angus and learning more than she bargained for in chasing the dreams of her mother's life. McBride is an award-winning poet, and her novel is lyrical and sad, infused with fascinating folklore and the chill of the Irish landscape. A literary Maeve Binchy; recommended for public libraries. Beth Gibbs, Davidson, NC Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc. Edna O'Brien What distinguishes The Nature of Wather and Air ...is the precision of the language and the haunting power of the narrative. Tillie Olsen Evoking a raw and spirited Ireland, The nature of Water and Air is an astoundingly rich and lyrical novel about mothers and daughters, secrets and delusions, and the salve of love. Brendan O'Carroll author of the Agnes Browne trilogy The Nature of Water and Air is delightful, lyrical, and beautifully sad. Thomas Moran author of The Man in the Box McBride artfully evokes the brilliant beauty and the strange, brooding darkness that often dwell together in the Irish soul. The Nature of Water and Air honors the underappreciated art of genuine storytelling. Peter Quinn author of Banished Children of Eve Filled with mystery and music, this is an astounding piece of storytelling that combines the dense lyricism of great poetry with the unflinching clarity of great prose. Kirkus Elegant prose distinguishes a first novel set in modern Ireland that reads like a reclaimed folktale...A fine debut, unsettling and magical. Beth Gibbs Library Journal McBride is an award-winning poet, and her novel is lyrical and sad, infused with fascinating folklore and the chill of the Irish landscape. A literary Maeve Binchy; recommended for public libraries. Regina McBride is the author of The Nature of Water and Air and The Land of Women. The recipient of fellowships from the NEA and the New York Foundation for the Arts, she lives in New York City. Chapter One My mother was never easy in the world of houses. She was a tinker, a traveler girl who had married a wealthy man. Her name was Agatha Sheehy. I don't know her maiden name. There are silences all around my mother's story. People stared at her when we walked on the old road to Dublin or in the nearby fields on our way into town. She was an anachronism, like a vagabond who'd walked off with a wealthy woman's traveling case. A pretty, red-faced girl with long white-blond hair, she had about her a wild, unrefined grace, and a penchant for sequins and beads and things that glimmered. In the bright of morning, on her way into town to shop for eggs and rashers, she navigated the often sopping fields in opulence, dragging the hems of long silk dresses, raking her black boots in mud. Even the old women wore their practical woolen skirts near the knee. She watched the eyes of the townspeople, choosing to read their silent stares as approbation or envy; but some days when her mood was more suspicious, a suppressed smile could send her scudding back across the field and into the house in a breathy tirade about the ugliness of the little ramshackle beach town of Bray, calling the Wicklow hills "lumps," insulting the land as if it were inseparable from the people. She laughed at the Irish Sea, which we could see from the parlor window, and said that even at their most tumultuous, the waves were "demure" in comparison with the waves of the great Atlantic in the rocky west of Ireland, beating and spuming at the Galway crags. We lived in an old estate house on Mercymount Strand, isolated between fields gone out of cultivation. Mrs. O'Dare, the woman who lived with us and did the cooking and cleaning, called it a "decrepit castle." It had no central heating, just the "fires," as the