The Trouble with Secrets

Kilteegan Bridge, County Cork 1958For eighteen year old Lena O'Sullivan, life is predictable and dull. A future of hard work, marriage to a local boy, and a family of her own one day is all she has to look forward to. People from her background know not to expect too much, but Lena yearns for something different.Malachy Berger was different, for him, the world is at his feet. An only child of a wealthy, if peculiar German father, a large inheritance, a beautiful house and a fine education are his due. Malachy's family history is shrouded in mystery but in the decades after the war, the arrival to Kilteegan Bridge of an autocratic German and his manservant, was the cause of much speculation.Neither family is in favour of Lena and Malachy’s friendship, but why not? What harm are they doing? Why is everyone so dead set against it?Then fate takes a hand, and Lena realises that secrets and lies have bound her and Malachy in an impossible situation. And their future seems determined by events that happened long before they were born.Beginning in rural Ireland and post-war Cardiff, Lena and Malachy’s story winds its way back to wartime Germany where the fate of millions was decided by an evil ideology, and the young couple find themselves in web of deceit that threatens to destroy them both.