Fallen

Spring 1915, Dublin. Katie Crilly - a young woman trying to find her place in a restrictive society - gets the news she dreaded: her beloved twin brother, Liam, has been killed on the Western Front. A year later, when Dublin is engulfed by the violence of the Easter Rising, Katie finds herself torn between her loyalty to the cause her brother died for, her instinctive Irish patriotism, and her love for her city and its people. Taking refuge in the home of friends, she meets Hubie Wilson, a comrade of Liam's from the Front. There unfolds a remarkable encounter between two young people, both wounded and both trying to imagine a new life. With its magnificent portrait of a young woman coming of age amidst violence and loss, Lia Mills has written a novel that can stand alongside Colm Tóibín's Brooklyn , Sebastian Faulks' Birdsong and Louisa Young's My Dear, I Wanted to Tell You .