It’s July, 1969, and the O’Mahonys are caught up in the excitement of the moon landing and a world seeming to stand on a new threshold. All is as normal as it can be in an Irish family except for the arrival from London of Tamara (11) – minus her voice. She is daughter of the estranged Uncle Jack, whose English wife has
just died.
Boisterous Sally (12) idolises her brother, Kieran (18), a champion hurler with a passion for horses. She resents the attention paid to silent, book-loving Tamara. Kieran is Tamara’s anchor in the alien world of the Cork farm with
its cast of animal characters.
The trio begin to enjoy summertime roaming the idyllic river valley but tension mounts. Kieran is at loggerheads with his workaholic father, Con. His grandmother, Nana, a storyteller, reads a frightening premonition in tea
leaves. His intuitive mother, Jenny, has a sense of foreboding. Like the astronauts, the family begins a voyage away from the familiar.
Sally almost dies in a farm accident. The family is catapulted onto the ‘dark side of the moon’ when Kieran is seriously injured in a fall from a horse, Balthasar. He learns to walk again but shakes badly.
Kieran’s refusal to deal with his condition over the winter threatens to tear the family asunder but a violent confrontation has a surprising outcome for Tamara. In April, Con buys a mooon-silver colt that Kieran names ‘Apollo’. One horse took Kieran away from the family, another sets him on the journey back.
A year after the accident, the O’Mahonys are slowly healing when they are plunged into loss again through a death in the family. This crisis brings Uncle Jack back to the farm, leading in turn to the potential for reconciliation but also the loss of Tamara. Can their fragile recovery stand these extra challenges?
