The houseguest

"Six days after burying his beautiful young wife, a grieving Edward Devlin leaves County Throne, Ireland, and sets off for America, where he hopes to cast off the ghosts of the past and find his way to a more hopeful future.".

"But the idealist who dedicated himself first to his country as a young freedom fighter and then to his beloved wife, Agnes, finds himself, at age thirty-six, weary and disillusioned. Try as he might, he cannot flee from the memories that haunt him: of narrowly escaping death in the 1916 Easter Rebellion and of bitter lessons about hate and betrayal learned during Ireland's civil war.

But his most aching memories are of Agnes and of their six-year-old daughter, Maura, who is a constant reminder of the loss he has not yet begun to face.".

"Determined to live an unencumbered life, Edward arrives in Depression-era Paterson, New Jersey, where he seeks out a man he barely knows, a prosperous mill owner named John Fitzgibbon.

It is the jovial, hospitable Fitz who finds him a job and invites him into his home; Fitz who introduces Edward to his sensual, neglected wife, Sylvia, setting in motion a chain of events that will irrevocably alter the lives of four people including a little girl left behind to fend for herself in an Irish boarding school."--BOOK JACKET.