Instructions for a Heatwave: A novel (Vintage Contemporaries)

An unforgettable narrativefrom the New York Times bestselling author of The Marriage Portrait and Hamnetof a family falling apart and coming together with hard-won, life-changing truths about who they really are. Strange weather brings out strange behavior. London, 1976. In the thick of a record-breaking heatwave, Gretta Riordans newly retired husband has cleaned out his bank account and vanished. Now, for the first time in years, Gretta calls her children home: Michael Francis, a history teacher whose marriage is failing; Monica, whose blighted past has driven a wedge between her and her younger sister; and Aoife, the youngest, whose new life in Manhattan is elaborately arranged to conceal a devastating secret. In a story that stretches from the Upper West Side to a village on the coast of Ireland, Maggie OFarrell explores the mysteries that inhere within families, and reveals the fault lines over which we build our lives.