Never before obsessed with anyone besides himself, real estate tycoon Freddie Grimes returns to his hometown in County Mayo, and becomes obsessed with Monica Duggan. She is a beautiful young woman, whom he desires even more than he wants the new mansion he is building to impress the locals in the small Irish village. Monica, devoted to her career as a writer, is instinctively repelled by the middle-aged divorc , but finds herself intrigued by his relentless pursuit. Local detective Gus Lenihan, more attractive to Monica, is falling hard for her, but religion and his own moral rectitude stand in the way. Tension and suspicion mount between the competing males, leading Monica to make some very curious choices - the results of which she could never have foreseen.
This is a dark, but exciting, story of the goings-on in a modern Irish rural parish. At its center is the tale of a pedophile priest who has been transferred by his bishop when his crimes catch up with him. It is also the story of one of that priest's victims who, thwarted in her quest for justice from the bishop, appeals to the state, and eventually finds it. The iniquities of the priest reverberate through the parish of Cranmore and his successor parish priest, the diocese of Kingsford, and the whole of Ireland.
