Dance Lessons

A year after her husbands death in a sailing accident off Marthas Vineyard, Ellen Boisvert bumps into an old friend. In this chance encounter, she discovers that her immigrant husband of almost fifteen years was not an orphan after all. Instead, his aged mother Jo is alive and residing on the familys isolated farm in the west of Ireland. Faced with news of her mother-in-law incarnate, the thirty-nine-year-old American prep school teacher decides to travel to Ireland to investigate the truth about her husband Fintan and why he kept his familys existence a secret for so many years. Between Jos hilltop farm and the lakeside village of Gowna, Ellen begins to uncover the mysteries of her Irish husbands past and the cruelties and isolation of his rural childhood. Ellen also stumbles upon Fintans long-ago romance with a local village woman, with whom he had a daughter, Cat. Cat is now fourteen and living with her mother in London. As Ellen reconciles her troubled relationship with Fintan, she discovers a way to heal the wounds of the past. Deeply rooted in the Irish landscape and sensibility, Dance Lessons is a powerful story of loss, regret, and transformation.