On a Clear Day

The enchanting story of a young girl growing up in 1950s Ireland Little Clare Richardson is just nine years old when her childhood is abruptly ended, with the death of both her parents. Though part of a large extended family of aunts, uncles and cousins - most living in and around Armagh - Clare feels herself bereft, and with the cares of the world on her shoulders. Her little brother William is a difficult child at best of times, and looking after him proves a full-time job. Taken in by kind Aunt Polly, to live in her cramped house in Belfast, Clare knows only that she wants to go back to live in the country. When her Grandma Scott dies, leaving her blacksmith grandfather alone, Clare seizes her opportunity, and returns to Salter's Grange to take care of him. At first tentative and awkward, the relationship between the old man and his granddaughter develops into a warm and loving bond that will sustain Clare through the years of her adolescence - as she grows into a lovely, intelligent young woman with the world at her feet.

Anne Doughty was born in Armagh. She is the author of A Few Late Roses (longlisted for the Irish Times fiction prize), Stranger in the Place and Summer of the Hawthorn. After many years in England she returned to Belfast in 1998 and wrote the first of a series of stand-alone novels that make up the Hamiltons sequence.