From Bruised Fell

When Gillian, the girls' mother, disappears, she casts each of her daughters upon their own quite separate quests for survival, solace and redemption. In the wake of her abandonment, the girls find their mother's absence as potent as her presence. While Missy aches for her mother's love, she holds the truth of that love's denial like a smooth, cold stone. Ruby, a few years younger, does not remember their mother or a dark, perilous afternoon on Bruised Fell. She refuses to acknowledge the strange events that led to their life without her. Rather, she clings to her yearning for the mother she imagines she lost. Unlike Missy, Ruby is determined to have that mother back, no matter the cost.

In Missy, Jane Finlay-Young has created a narrator of unforgettable grace and clarity. In the two sisters, she details brilliantly a sibling relationship in all its intimacy and complexity. With lyricism and emotional truth, From Bruised Fell explores our capacity to live with and beyond a troubled past, and the dire necessity of telling its story.