Across the River - Hardcover

Taylor, Alice

3.95

96 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312278438 ISBN 13: 9780312278434

Publisher: St. Martin's Press, 2001

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The Phelan and Conway farms stand in hostile confrontation across the river from each other. The long dispute between the two families simmers, then explodes. Meanwhile, Martha Phelan is locked in stubborn conflict with her son Peter. He wants to make changes in the way the farm is run, but she secretly plans quite different changes. However, as the tension between them builds, it is suddenly overtaken by the force of a greater problem.

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About the Author:

Alice Taylor's first memoir, To School Through the Fields, was an overnight sensation, becoming the fastest-selling book in Ireland's history and spawning a series of further volumes that includes Quench the Lamp, The Village, Country Days, and An Irish Country Christmas, as well as a novel, The Woman of the House. She continues to make her home in Innishannon, County Cork, where her family tends to the local post office and market.

From Publishers Weekly:

A family feud is brewing in the rural depths of 1960s Ireland in this comfortable but unremarkable second novel by Taylor, a sequel to her first, The Woman in the House. At Mossgrove, the Phelan family farm, longtime hired hand Jack plays peacemaker as widow Martha Phelan battles her young son, Peter, who wants to modernize the farm. Tensions on the home front are bitter enough, but at the Conway farm across the river, more trouble is brewing. Slovenly Matt Conway, who has "wisps of foxy hair" and a "fascination with rats," feels trapped and abuses his wife, Biddy. Spurred on by a misguided belief that the Phelans got the best of him in a loan to buy land, he keeps vigil at a fence post plotting revenge and finally sets fire to the Phelan's freshly stacked hay. Then the town's parish priest, Father Brady goaded by malicious gossip about his relationship with happily married Kate Phelan, Martha's sister-in-law issues a sermon on protecting the "fruits of the Earth." Martha finally buries the hatchet with Peter as the family is faced with a serious matter that ties the book up nicely for readers, and Father Brady displays a sharp right hook to match his fiery rhetoric. Despite characterizations that lack complexity, Taylor's flair for the dramatic creates an atmosphere of suspense, and folksy witticisms and homey evocations of rural life round out the tale.

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