"When Mercy Mulcahy was 40 years old, she was accused of killing her elderly and tyrannical father. Now, at the end of her life, she has written a book about what really happened on that fateful night of Christmas Eve, 1989.
The tragic and beautiful Mercy has devoted her life to protecting Star from her father, Star's grandfather. His behavior so blighted her own life – she never wanted it to touch her darling daughter.
Yet Star won't even read the manuscript. Star's contempt for Mercy is as painful as it is inexplicable.
Why? What has Mercy done? What is she hiding? Was her father's death, as many believe, an assisted suicide?
Or something even more sinister?
In this book, nothing is what it seems on the surface, and everywhere there are emotional twists and surprises.
Set in Ireland and California, Blue Mercy is a compelling novel, combing lyrical description with a page-turning style. It is an enthralling tale of love, loss, and the ever-present possibility of redemption.
Praise for Orna Ross and Blue Mercy
'A lyrical, gripping, and heartbreakingly beautiful tale of love, loss, and the ever-present possibility of redemption.' — WE Magazine for Women
'Epic sweep...ambitious scope... an intelligent book'. — Sunday Tribune
'A riveting story...vividly brought to life.' — Emigrant Online"
"What happens when a woman is haunted by the sins of her foremothers--and the men who betrayed them?
Facing the birth of her child, and single motherhood, Jo Devereux has spent the last six months in Mucknamore, the small hometown that she ran from twenty years ago, investigating her family's troubled past.
A trunk of letters and diaries left by her grandmother and great- aunt reveals a heartbreaking legacy of bitter secrets - secrets that have haunted the women in her family for four generations.
Now she must find out the ultimate truth: Who really killed her great uncle? What secrets and lies lay under her mother's and grandmother's unshakeable silence?
And then there is Rory... her childhood love and the son of her family's sworn enemies. Could Jo's mission to uncover the truth be the key to a possible future together? Or will it be their undoing?
As she pieces together the poisonous fragments of the past, Jo must now face up to what knowing the truth means for her future-- or risk losing everything all over again.
Read this haunting, heartbreaking saga of love, loss, and secrets in a country and a family ravaged by all kinds of intimate war. "
"A death in the present—a killing in the past.
After twenty years away, Jo Devereux flies home to Ireland for her mother’s funeral — the mother she hasn’t spoken to for more than two decades. Every minute there reminds her of all the reasons she left and she has no desire to reacquaint herself with her home village. Or with Rory O’Donovan, her lost love.
Then, she reads her mother’s will. Her inheritance is a chest full of letters and journals, written by her grandmother and great-aunt, that answer a long held secret. Who murdered her great-uncle in the Irish Civil War.. and why? How did what an uprising for Irish freedom and independence degenerate into a bitter civil war where neighbor turned against neighbor, and family against family– leaving a legacy of lies, secrets, and silences for generations to come?
As Jo unearths the bitter, buried history she shares with Rory she finally understands why their love was doomed from the start. But what about now? Can she stay true to both her heart and her heritage? She knows from her own life how the wild energy of rebellion can carry someone away… but what happens after the rising?"
