Grace Quinn is an Englishwoman who remains an outsider, despite having lived in rural Ireland all of her adult life. Her brutal husband blames her for the accidental death of their young son some twenty years earlier, and refuses to accept their surviving son, Martin, and his open homosexuality. When her husband, while driving drunk, runs down and kills a local girl, he is imprisoned. Upon his release, Grace finds herself cast further from their small, tight-knit community. With her husband's abuse continuing, Grace, in an act with haunting consequences, finally plots her escape. But instead of releasing her from years of misery and violence, this act of desperation takes Grace on a journey of denial, breaking her world into pieces and leading her into another -- Dublin, Martin's world.

A brilliant portrayal of a woman on the edge, a touching portrait of a mother and son, an examination of the nature of longing and belonging, The Long Falling will establish Keith Ridgway as one of the most promising writers to have emerged from the Irish literary tradition in recent years.