It’s 1970s Ireland. Jack O’Connell saves the life of an American sailor, Troy, who repays him by unwittingly stealing the love of his life, Kate O’Rourke, from him. Jack is determined not to lose Kate and, spurred on by jealousy and circumstance, wins his girl back. Now a doctor in Dublin, his life is perfect – with a young son and another child on the way – when it all falls apart as Kate commits suicide. In the fall out, he loses custody of his son, Cathal, to his embittered sister-in-law, but many questions remain unanswered. Twenty years later, Cathal has gone missing in the US and Jack is drawn back – secrets and all – into the family that ostracised him after Kate’s death.

Peopled by multiple suitors and women enamoured of men in uniforms, Heritage of Secrets has echoes of Thomas Hardy’s Far from the Madding Crowd in more than just the name of the American sailor, Troy.

With a keen eye for drama, Aoife Mannix navigates the peaks and troughs of intertwining lives in this exploration of a society in flux. As Heritage of Secrets reaches its climax, actions taken during the days of The Troubles yield startling consequences at a time when marijuana has begun to filter into the bathrooms of convent schools in Ireland and issues of sexuality come to the fore as a new generation shakes off the shackles of convention and small town claustrophobia.

Aoife Mannix was born in Stockholm of Irish parents, grew up in Dublin, Ottawa and New York. She has been general manager of The Royal Court Theatre’s Young Writers Programme and script editor for the BBC drama series Holby City. As a poet and dramatist she has published four books; The Trick of Foreign Words (2002), The Elephant in the Corner (2005), Growing Up an Alien (2007) and the recent Turn the Clocks Upside Down – all with the tall-lighthouse press. She has also written two drama documentaries for BBC Radio 4.

Aoife’s short stories appear in the anthologies, Tell Tales Volume 3 (2006), Small Voices, Big Confessions (2006) and Westside Stories (2003), and her TV sitcom Since Dad Left was short listed for the BBC’s Two Timing competition in 2004.

She lives in London.