We are our stories. We tell them to stay alive or keep alive those who only live now in the telling. In Faha, County Clare, everyone is a long story... .. Bedbound in her attic room beneath the rain, plain Ruth Swain is in search of her father. To find him, Ruthie must first trace the Swains, their jutting jaw lines, narrow faces and gleamy skin, from the restless Reverend Swain, her great-grandfather, to grandfather Abraham, to her father, Virgil . via pole-vaulting, salmon fishing, poetry and a wild rain-sodden history of the pursuit of the impossible on fourteen acres of the worst farming land in Ireland. A celebration of books, love and the healing power of storytelling, this is an exquisite, funny novel in which every sentence sings.