Before My Actual Heart Breaks

While the Northern Irish troubles rumble in the distance, one woman has a battle of her own, right on the doorstep.

Not all long marriages start with romance and dreams; some are solutions to harsh practical problems. And such is the case with Mary and John, because the year of their marriage is 1982, and Mary is a sixteen-year-old Catholic girl ‘in trouble’ – and her groom John Johns the answer her parents have found to the question she didn’t even know she was asking. She wore her hair in pigtails to her wedding, in defiance, and cried all night when she realised her da wasn’t bringing her home again after.

And yet their long marriage is a love story just waiting to happen. Waiting and waiting: through five babies, and twenty-five years, until we join Mary, as she sits in mourning, nursing an empty nest, an empty lap, empty arms, and a hollow heart. After all this time, will she be able to stop herself from falling in love with her silent husband?

Format: Paperback
Page Count: 384 Pages
Imprint: Cornerstone Digital
Published: Oct 2021
ISBN: 9781786090980