The Fall of Light

Product Description
Francis Foley is a proud, stubborn man, and cannot stand to be beholden to anyone. Quick to anger and slow to forgiveness, it is his temper that, one day, costs his sons their home - and their mother. This will not be the last of their losses however: as the four boys and their father embark on an odyssey to find untenanted land they can call their own, their already diminished family is divided still further. But if a combination of choice and chance cause the five to separate and scatter, each to their own road, then a series of casual encounters and coincidences offer some hope for reunion and - in Francis's case - redemption. Set in Ireland in the mid-nineteenth century, "The Fall of Light" traces the footsteps of the five Foley men. With elegant, elegiac prose, Niall Williams guides his characters - and his readers - through hazard and hardship, friendship, love and death, through to Europe, America and Africa ...and home again.
From Publishers Weekly
The travails of the Foley family in the times before and during the Irish potato famine are the subject of Williams's overwrought, unashamedly romantic epic (after Four Letters of Love). Francis Foley inherited his rebel blood from a father who was hung for treason by the English, but his marauding spirit is tamed somewhat when he marries Emer O'Suilleabhain, the daughter of a village schoolteacher. A gardener on the great estate of a mostly absentee grandee, Francis eventually takes to breaking into the big house and looking at the sky through his lordship's telescope, to Emer's dismay; their quarrels escalate into violence and she leaves him. Francis, desperate to find her, packs up his four sons, steals the telescope, sets fire to the estate and runs off. So begins a series of disasters that sees the Foley boys Tomas, Teige and the twins, Finbar and Finan separated and reunited several times as their destinies carry them to Hungary, America and Africa. Tomas, the oldest, falls in love with a beautiful prostitute named Blath, for whom he kills a man. Teige, the youngest, becomes a locally famous horse tamer and runs off with Elizabeth, the daughter of the squire he works for, and Finbar winds up the leader of a gypsy band. Francis himself is nearly drowned, and is rescued by monks; he searches for his sons and is finally reunited with Emer, now a blind woman. Williams veers from lyricism to blarney in swooping, misty paragraphs sure to please his readership. Major ad/promo; 5-city author tour.

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About the Author
Niall Williams was born in 1958 and lives in Kiltumper, Ireland, with his wife Christine and their two children. He is the author of three other novels, including Four Letters of Love (which was sold in over twenty countries and an international bestseller) as well as, most recently, Only Say the Word.
Review
Praise for Niall Williams: "A delicate and graceful love story that is also an exaltation of love itself...A luminously written, magical work of fiction."
From Booklist
The author of the acclaimed debut novel
Four Letters of Love (1997), Williams once again features a father undone by grandiose dreams. Sick to death of the menial chores required and the disrespect he suffers as a gardener on a vast estate in Ireland, working for an absentee landlord, Francis Foley steals a splendid telescope from the owner's large library. His wife, tired of constantly being on the move and of her husband's refusal to put his family before his pride, has taken off. In order to escape the law, Francis and his four sons sneak away in the middle of the night. In attempting to cross a turbulent river, the sons become separated from their father and eventually from each other. Now the father wants nothing more than what he once had: the closeness and comfort of his family. Williams expertly covers a lot of territory--the stark tragedy of the potato famine, the