My Dream of You

Kathleen de Burca is a travel writer based in London. The office is the nearest thing she has to a home. When a quick series of blows strips away the props of her life, she is faced with the frightening imperative of change.

In her crisis she decides to investigate a true story about a relationship so passionate that it burned its way across the barriers of class and culture — a scandalous affair between the wife of an English landlord and an Irish servant during the devastation of Ireland's potato famine.

After an absence of thirty years, Kathleen returns to Ireland to research the story and begins a journey that leads her not only into the historical past, but into a reconsideration of the family she fled years ago. While back in Ireland, she meets a lover of her own who presents her with a choice that promises to alter the course of her life. As she moves toward her decision, she calls on the strengths of her identity as a woman, an Irish woman, and a woman who is no longer young. Meanwhile, she brings the story of the long-ago lovers to a denouement as tender as it is tragic.

My Dream of You explores the extremes of passion, the depths of loneliness, and the resilience of the human heart.

"Full of brilliant writing and heartbreaking insight . . . Unlike all but the best writers, O’Faolain isn’t afraid to write about a character as smart and complicated as she is."—Newsweek

A 2001 New York Times Notable Book