Synopsis

From coastal Massachusetts to rural Ireland, the characters in Trespassers struggle to reconcile past and present, place and displacement, loss and hope.

A woman travels from her Massachusetts home to her native Irish village to care for her estranged and sick father. Back in her childhood home, she comes face-to-face with previously unspoken losses.

A wealthy couple travels to Cape Cod to spend their 52nd summer on the wife’s ancestral estate. On their private beach above Nantucket Sound, the husband must confront the realities of their long marriage and its social-class tensions.

An Irish immigrant takes her American-born teen to a raucous Boston house party. At that party, the teenager discovers that her mother had lied about her child’s birth father—a lie that will permanently divide the mother and daughter.

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Excerpt

Excerpt from the short story, “Man on the Train.”

In Lorna’s overseas (nursing) assignments, everything always felt strange at first, but three days after she’d unpacked her rucksack in a Spartan room, things always turned comfortable and familiar.

But America is too big, too cold. The trees against the sky, the antique Waverly houses and shops and town library—they’re all drawn in high definition or sharp relief, like the illustrations in a glossy children’s book. Here, there’s a constant scrim between her and the world and, except for the night sky through the hospital windows, she has neither seen nor been in the city of Boston.

Maybe it’s not America. Or Waverly. Maybe it’s her, Lorna Walsh, a 38-year-old woman who was born to live her life drifting between places and countries.
 

About the Author

An Irish native, Áine Greaney now lives and writes in the Boston area. In addition to her five published books, her short works have appeared in Creative Nonfiction, Salon, Another Chicago Magazine, The Boston Globe Magazine, The New York Times, Books Ireland, NPR/WBUR, and other publications.

As well as being an author, Greaney is a trained teacher who has designed and led fiction and non-fiction workshops, presentations, and keynotes for regional, national, and international organizations.

Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, cited in Best American Essays, and named a ‘Great Group Read’ by the Women’s National Book Association.

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