Jane Urquhart

A stunning, evocative novel set in Ireland and Canada, Away traces a family's complex and layered past. The narrative unfolds with shimmering clarity, and takes us from the harsh northern Irish coast in the 1840s to the quarantine stations at Grosse Isle and the barely hospitable land of the Canadian Shield; from the …

In 1867 a good-natured Bavarian priest, is sent by God and mad King Ludwig to the wilds of North America. Soon the backwoods are transformed into a parish and the settlers into a congregation, and Joseph Becker, a woodcarver, meets his future wife. Several decades later, Joseph Becker teaches his astounding carving …

With stunning virtuosity, the stories in Jane Urquhart’s dazzling first book of fiction unearth universal truths as they reach across countries and eras. A woman runs away to a cottage in the English moors to escape a love affair; shards of glass reconcile a middle-aged wife to her husband’s estrangement; a …