Read in a day. The most captivating book I've read this year. It has a haunting and dreamlike quality. Lucy was 8 when her Protestant parents felt they had to leave their Irish home in County Cork in 1921.
Her father shot but lightly wounded a youth who had intended, with others, to burn their house down. Lucy wished to stay, and ran away through woods. She fell and broke her leg, and was unable to return home. Her parents, finding discarded clothing where Lucy frequently bathed in the sea, thought she was drowned. It was only after they had abandoned Ireland that Lucy was found, emaciated but alive. Her parents couldn't be contacted, and Lucy grew up waiting for their return, to apologise for running away. She declined marriage to a man she loved and who loved her back, because she wanted to make peace with her parents first. Her mother died in Switzerland and her father eventually returned when she was about 38.
The plotter who was shot joined the army, and went mad due to his dreams about setting her house ablaze. After her father's death she visited him regularly in the asylum to play snakes and ladders! She grew old in the old house in the end. Such a sad novel, I suppose about redemption and forgiveness.