Outside an east Belfast mission hall, pastor and family man Samuel Orr meets Anna, a young Beckett scholar. They embark on an intense, passionate affair, their connection fueled by their respective love of Christ and Beckett. When Anna falls pregnant, the affair is revealed. The repercussions are slow to emerge but inescapable, and the fallout when it finally comes is shocking, cruel and violent.
Over 30 years later, Sam, their son, is in New York, living a steady, guarded life, his childhood and family safely abandoned. But the sins of the fathers are visited often on their children, and the past crashes into his life as violently as in his youth. He is forced to confront the fears he has kept close all these years.
THE FIRST DAY is the story of an affair and its consequences --- on family and on faith. It is an intense, questioning novel of the search to understand our origins and to free ourselves from the burdens of our early years. It's a stunning debut, meditative and compelling, incantatory, at times devastating and always mesmerizing.
- Click here to read an excerpt.
Click here to enter the contest
by 11:59am ET on Tuesday, October 17th.
