An Irish Tragicomedy

A vanished mother. A fractured family. A lifetime of choosing the wrong men.

When their bold, brassy mother vanishes into Ireland's Traveller community, Shibby Magee and her twin sister Dorah are left behind in a family already cracking at the seams. Under the iron rule of their rigidly bigoted grandmother, the girls grow up on opposite tracks: Dorah, defiant and arrogant; Shibby, bruised and unmoored. As an adult, desperate for love, Shibby is drawn to men who abuse or discard her, caught in patterns she can't yet see. She finds a measure of stability in the chaos of a restaurant kitchen—but a question persists: is her future in the settled world, or on the open road to God only knows where?

With the steadfast support of Alice Duffy, a housekeeper turned surrogate mother; Moochie de Barra, a stand-in for an emotionally absent father; and Kitty Dooley, who embodies the fierce pride and harsh realities of Traveller life—Shibby begins to confront hard truths about cultural identity, family, and what it will take to find where she truly belongs.

Rich with texture and lyrical rhythm, this novel traces how early abandonment echoes into midlife, revealing what endures, what shifts, and how patterns repeat until the cycle finally breaks.

In the tradition of Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan, Trespasses by Louise Kennedy, and Donal Ryan's The Queen of Dirt Island, Shibby Magee is a warm yet incisive portrait of a woman shaped by loss, grief, and social prejudice as she struggles toward dignity, love, and self-possession.

With its brilliant sense of time, place, and setting, and its depiction of prejudiced small-town attitudes towards the Traveller community and homosexuality, this is a novel examining the real meaning of family and love. Lyrical, well observed, and darkly funny, it explores the issues of cultural identity, abandonment, and self acceptance.—Helen Towers, Borderlines Book Festival programmer