Niall Williams

"Change is coming to Faha, a small Irish parish that hasn't changed in a thousand years. For one thing, the rain is stopping. Nobody remembers when it started; rain on the western seaboard is a condition of living. But now - just as Father Coffey proclaims the coming of the electricity - the rain clouds are lifting. Seventeen-year-old Noel Crowe is idling in the unexpected sunshine when Christy makes his first entrance into Faha, bringing secrets...

A tale based on John the Apostle's final years places the elderly, blind John in exile on the island of Patmos, until the Roman emperor lifts the ban against Christianity, enabling John's return to the religiously torn region of Ephesus.

The hero is William, son of an Irish painter who committed suicide and burned his paintings. Only one survived, sold to a poet, and William travels to buy it back. In this way he meets the poet's daughter, Isabel, married for 24 hours and unhappy.

An award-winning author documents a year living in the garden of his wife's ancestral home in Kiltumper in rural Ireland, following the natural rhythms of the earth as they observe its wonders.