During the lockdown of 2020, an Irish novelist receives an unexpected visitor: Nance Heffernan, a woman believed to have died in New York ten years earlier.

Nance brings with her a manuscript recounting her lonely childhood beside Hangman’s Wood, her reinvention in Brooklyn as Anna Anderson, and the devastating bombing that made her notorious. But why did she allow the world to believe she was dead—and can her memories be trusted?

Éibhear Walshe’s last and finest novel, The Girl from Hangman’s Wood is darkly funny, haunting and deeply moving: a story of love and betrayal, identity and reinvention, and the dangerous stories we tell about the living and the dead.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

The late Eibhear Walshe was born in Waterford, studied in Dublin, and lived in Cork, where he lectured in the School of English at University College Cork and was Director of Creative Writing. He was published in the areas of memoir, literary criticism and biography, and his books include Kate O’Brien: a Writing Life (2006), Oscar’s Shadow: Wilde and Ireland (2012), and A Different Story: The Writings of Colm Toibin (2013). His childhood memoir, Cissie’s Abattoir (2009), was broadcast on RTE’s Book on One. His novel, The Diary of Mary Travers (2014) was shortlisted for the Kerry Group Novel of the Year in 2015 and longlisted for the 2016 International Dublin Literary Award. He was Associate Editor, with Catherine Marshall, of Modern Ireland in 100 Art Works, edited by Fintan O’Toole and shortlisted for the Bord Gais Energy Irish Book Award. His novel on Handel, The Trumpet Shall Sound was published in 2019 and his novel about Elizabeth Bowen, The Last Day at Bowen’s Court, was published in 2020 to critical acclaim.

PRAISE FOR EIBHEAR WALSHE

LAST DAY AT BOWEN’S COURT:

‘Author Elizabeth Bowen’s complex wartime affair with a diplomat is captured perfectly…he gives the reader a vivid and deeply moving portrait of two complex people who couldn’t escape each other even if they wanted to.’

SUNDAY TIMES

‘A subtle, compelling and detailed reimagining of one of the great enduring love affairs of the literary twentieth century. Eibhear Walshe has brought a vanished time back to life.’

JOHN BANVILLE

THE TRUMPET SHALL SOUND:

‘A plausible, sensuous coming-of-age story about a genius wrestling with love and ambition across eighteenth-century Europe.’

EMMA DONOGHUE

‘Eibhear Walshe brings us into Handel’s world with such precision, clarity and beauty that it seems real and unforced, the work of a true artist.’

JOSEPH O’CONNOR

THE DIARY OF MARY TRAVERS:

‘A marvellous novel and an ingenious one…historical fiction of the highest order; dark, complex, artful and compelling.’

CARLO GÉBLER