"Breaking the silence will draw you home"--Cover.

The novel moves between the late 1980s and the early noughties. A small Irish community is preparing for the wedding of two of their young inhabitants. They're barely adults, but as part of group of friends, they've grown up together - not so long out of school. There is a car accident, the friends heading to the beach the last evening before the wedding. Not everyone survives the crash and the reverberations are felt throughout the village. The young driver of the car survives, but staying is impossible and so he leaves, first for Liverpool and later to New York where he can forget his past and no longer hide his sexuality. But of course the past can catch up with you.