The Translation of the Bones

A novel about faith and motherhood from the author of AN EQUAL STILLNESS, winner of the Orange Prize For New Writers.

Faith or delusion, fantasy or fact? When word gets out that Mary-Margaret O'Reilly, a slow-witted but apparently harmless young woman, may have been witness to a miracle, religious mania descends on the Church of the Sacred Heart in Battersea.

The consequences will be profound, not only for Mary-Margaret but for others too - Father Diamond, the parish priest, who is in the midst of his own lonely crisis of faith and Stella Morrison, adrift in a loveless marriage and aching for her ten-year old son, away at boarding school.

Meanwhile, Alice Armitage counts the days until her soldier son comes home from Afghanistan and Mary-Margaret's mother, Fidelma, imprisoned in her tower block, stares out over London for hour after hour with nothing but her thoughts for company. Remembering her early childhood by the sea in Ireland, the bleak institution she was sent to and the boy she loved, she hungers for consoling touch. But as Mary-Margaret's attempts to change lives become increasingly desperate, a tragedy ensues.