The Mermaids Singing Hardcover - 1998

From the publisher

There is an island of the west coast or Ireland called Inis Muruch--the Island of the Mermaids--a world where myth is more powerful than truth, where the sea sings with the healing and haunting voices of women, and where death is never as strong as the redemptive powers of family and love. It is here that Lisa Carey sets her lyrical and sensual first novel, weaving together the voices and lives of three generations of Irish-American women.

Years ago, Cliona--strong, proud and practical--sailed for Boston, determined to one day come home. But when the time came to return to Inis Muruch, her daughter Grace--fierce, beautiful, and brazenly sexual--relented her mother's isolated, unfamiliar world. Though entranced by the sea and its healing powers, Grace became desperate to escape the confines of the island, one day stealing away with her small daughter Grainne.

Now Grainne--motherless at thirteen after Grace's death room breast cancer is about to be taken back across the ocean by Cliona, repeating the journey her mother was forced to make years before. She goes to meet a rather she has never known, her heart pulled between a lire where she no longer belongs to a family she cannot remember. On the rocky slopes or Inis Muruch, she waits for her father, and begins to discover her own sexual identity even as she struggles to understand the forces that have torn her family apart.

THE MERMAIDS SINGING in a novel about love and resentment between mothers and daughters; the secrets of age; and the rebellion of youth. It is about the heartbreak of being torn between worlds, and the search for a place to call home. In her first novel, Lisa Carey has crafted voices so real and passionate that they resonate within the reader long after the last page in turned.

There is an island of the west coast or Ireland called Inis Muruch--the Island of the Mermaids--a world where myth is more powerful than truth, where the sea sings with the healing and haunting voices of women, and where death is never as strong as the redemptive powers of family and love. It is here that Lisa Carey sets her lyrical and sensual first novel, weaving together the voices and lives of three generations of Irish-American women.

Years ago, Cliona--strong, proud and practical--sailed for Boston, determined to one day come home. But when the time came to return to Inis Muruch, her daughter Grace--fierce, beautiful, and brazenly sexual--relented her mother's isolated, unfamiliar world. Though entranced by the sea and its healing powers, Grace became desperate to escape the confines of the island, one day stealing away with her small daughter Grainne.

Now Grainne--motherless at thirteen after Grace's death room breast cancer is about to be taken back across the ocean by Cliona, repeating the journey her mother was forced to make years before. She goes to meet a rather she has never known, her heart pulled between a lire where she no longer belongs to a family she cannot remember. On the rocky slopes or Inis Muruch, she waits for her father, and begins to discover her own sexual identity even as she struggles to understand the forces that have torn her family apart.

THE MERMAIDS SINGING in a novel about love and resentment between mothers and daughters; the secrets of age; and the rebellion of youth. It is about the heartbreak of being torn between worlds, and the search for a place to call home. In her first novel, Lisa Carey has crafted voices so real and passionate that they resonate within the reader long after the last page in turned.