Her mother had visited Ireland, the summer after her college graduation. Twenty-seven years ago, Laura Daley had stepped off a plane, just as Nan had just done, ready to begin a wonderful adventure in the land of her ancestors. Nan could only imagine the young woman her mother had been. Laura Daley Galvin had died of cancer when Nan was eight.

This trip was a way to discover the other side of her, she’d decided. After her mother’s death, she’d cared for her father, keeping house, excelling in her schoolwork, living at home while she attended college and after she took her first job. As time went on, she’d become more like him-a quiet homebody, satisfied to find adventure between the pages of a book rather than in the real world.

A year ago, she’d buried Jim Galvin beside her mother. But it was the discovery of a trunk full of her mother’s memories that caused Nan to reevaluate the person she was. The contents provided a window into the woman Laura Daley Galvin had been-adventurous, curious, spontaneous. And a packet of letters revealed a lasting friendship with an Irish woman named Carey, a woman that Nan was determined to meet.

She’d decided to start saving for an adventure and, to her surprise, it had taken her only nine months to save enough for ten days in Ireland. What would she discover here? Would she have an adventure as her mother had? Was there anything left of Laura Daley inside of her?

Somewhere, outside the terminal, a driver was waiting for her, ready to whisk her away to the pretty little seaside town of Ballykirk in County Cork and the beautiful country cottage she’d rented over the internet. Nan glanced at the clock and winced. He’d been waiting for three hours.

“Next!”

Nan stepped up to the desk and slapped down her passport and the immigration form she’d completed on the plane.