It is 1985. Bill Furlong, a coal and timber merchant in an Irish town, braces himself for his busiest season in the weeks leading up to Christmas. As he does the rounds, he feels the past rising to meet him - and encounters the complicit silence of a people controlled by the Church. '[A] snowglobe of a story that fits a whole bustling, striving, yearning world into 114 finely wrought pages.' - Sunday Times.