Anthony Fennell, an Irish journalist and playwright, is assigned to cover the underwater cables that carry the world’s information. The sum of human existence --- words, images, transactions, memes, voices, viruses --- travels through the tiny fiber-optic tubes. But sometimes the tubes break, at an unfathomable depth. Fennell’s journey brings him to the west coast of Africa, where he uncovers a story about the raw human labor behind the dazzling veneer of the technological world. He meets a fellow Irishman, the mysterious John Conway, who is a skilled engineer and a freediver capable of reaching extraordinary depths. When the ship is sent up the coast to repair a series of major underwater breaks, both men learn that the very cables they seek to fix carry the news that may cause their lives to unravel.

Bassam Aramin is Palestinian. Rami Elhanan is Israeli. They inhabit a world of conflict that colors every aspect of their lives --- from the roads they are allowed to drive on, to the schools their children attend, to the checkpoints, both physical and emotional, they must negotiate. But their lives, however circumscribed, are upended one after the other: first, Rami’s 13-year-old daughter, Smadar, becomes the victim of suicide bombers; a decade later, Bassam’s 10-year-old daughter, Abir, is killed by a rubber bullet. Rami and Bassam had been raised to hate one another. And yet, when they learn of each other’s stories, they recognize the loss that connects them. Together they attempt to use their grief as a weapon for peace --- and, with their one small act, start to permeate what has for generations seemed an impermeable conflict.

Colum McCann’s latest consists of a novella and three short stories. In the title piece, mystery surrounds the death of a retired 82-year-old New York Supreme Court justice. The other stories involve a writer struggling to compose a story for a New Year’s edition of a magazine, a mother in Galway whose 13-year-old adopted son has disappeared, and an elderly nun who discovers that the man who kidnapped her 37 years earlier is now a diplomat.

Three iconic crossings are connected by a series of remarkable women whose personal stories are caught up in the swells of history. Beginning with Irish housemaid Lily Duggan, who crosses paths with Frederick Douglass, TRANSATLANTIC follows her daughter and granddaughter, and culminates in the present-day story of Hannah Carson, in whom all the hopes and failures of previous generations live on.