The Walking People

Mary Beth Keane Michael Joseph, £14.99

Following the success of the absorbing family saga Ask Again, Yes, Mary Beth Keane’s debut novel has been published in the UK for the first time. It’s an equally engrossing, perceptive tale of knotty family dynamics, exploring how the people we love the most can hurt us the most, and how home is where the heart is.

The Cahills are the last family left in remote Ballyroan on the west coast of Ireland. All their neighbours have emigrated in search of work and, when Greta’s restless sister Johanna plans a new start in the US, their mother Lily decides it’s best for Greta to leave too.

The pair are 19 and 16 in 1963 when they board a ship bound for New York, accompanied by Michael, a local traveller who has been working on the family farm.

However, months after arriving in New York, headstrong Johanna leads the trio into disaster. Greta and Michael must pick up the pieces – and to keep a troubling secret from their loved ones.

Back home, Greta was nicknamed the Goose and seen as slightly defective. However, in New York, she rises majestically to the challenges presented by her new life. And, touchingly, the bond between Greta and Michael quickly deepens.

But the consequences of Johanna’s actions reverberate down the decades, driving a wedge between Greta and her homeland. What would it take to bridge the gap between the world Greta came from and the world she now lives in?

Mary Beth Keane is a gifted storyteller. Her characters are complex and surprising, even to themselves, relatable in their frailties, admirable in their determination to make the best of the hand they’ve been dealt.

Her grasp of the push/pull of family dynamics is pin sharp and she captures the windswept grittiness of Irish poverty as vividly as the technicolour hustle and bustle of 1960s New York.

The Walking People is the kind of novel you simply don’t want to end.