Birdeye

Synopsis

One chilly April morning a stranger shows up at a commune in the Catskill Mountains, upstate New York. Conor is greeted by Liv, sixty-seven years old, mother, cancer survivor and founder of the once pilgrimage-worthy Birdeye Colony, now well past its heyday. Liv lets him stay, unaware that her two oldest friends are about to make a devastating announcement. Conor seems to offer a lifeline, but who is he really? As truths masked by free spirit push their way into the open, Liv must reassess what she asks of those she loves most.

Birdeye is a novel about tolerance, the choices we make in good faith, and, ultimately, what they cost.

Praise for Birdeye

‘With luminous prose, infinite humanity and exceptional storytelling, Heneghan shows us family – whether chosen or given – in all its fascinating complexity. Evocative, haunting, masterful.’ —Claire Fuller

An emotive, twisty read that explores the strength and choices of women determined to create a better world – make your next read a journey of passion, buy your copy now!

Praise for this Book

‘With luminous prose, infinite humanity and exceptional storytelling, Heneghan shows us family – whether chosen or given – in all its fascinating complexity. Evocative, haunting, masterful.’ —Claire Fuller

‘Written with gorgeous precision and a haunting intensity, Birdeye will not let you go. The novel is richly reminiscent of Elizabeth Strout’s fiction, full of spiky individualistic types whose flawed stubborn fealty to their beliefs take the story in surprising, and moving, directions.’ —Carole Burns, award-winning author of The Same Country 

‘Wonderfully drawn and developed, complex and contradictory in all the best ways, selfish and selfless, self-aware and oblivious – Liv Ferrars is utterly real.’ —Sarah Butler, author of Starling

‘Birdeye is a compelling story of maternal courage and an edgy evocation of countercultural life in the Catskills. I found it moving and surprising.’ —Katie Munnik, author of The Aerialists

Praise for Previous Work

‘A captivating story about foreigners in Ukraine in the 1990s. In Snegurochka grand historical and political narratives – of Ukraine’s newfound independence, of the Second World War – interweave with the very personal stories of the book’s female protagonists – Rachel, Zoya, and Elena.’ —Emily Couch, The Moscow Times

‘It’s a very interesting and clever read. With no narrative tricksiness it shows us the author’s knowledge of that time and place, and more importantly a wonderful character, one who struggles with her new-found family and her new-found sense of displacement. Rich and readable, this is well worth turning to.’ —John Lloyd, NB Magazine

‘An unnerving and enthralling novel set in newly independent Ukraine, Snegurochka is a captivating story of motherhood, betrayal, belonging and control.’ —Hampshire Life

‘It is a joy to read a novel in which the elements fuse so harmoniously: taut but lyrical prose, an exceptionally vivid sense of place, politics and culture but also of a pivotal time which is neither recent nor of the distant past. I regularly say that a good novel makes me feel I’ve seen the film; this one made me feel I was there, confronted with the vertigo-inducing view from that balcony.’ —Isabel Costello, The Literary Sofa