Clonfert - Synopsis
- Stephen Jaques
- 1 day ago
- 2 min read
September 10th 1845. Newmarket, County Cork, Ireland.
Brigid Moynahan picks up a pen.
She is educated, bilingual, married with two children. A woman of quiet capability in a world that is about to collapse around her. The Great Famine has arrived at her door and she does what comes naturally — she writes everything down. Every detail. Every loss. Every day that passes without enough food and without enough hope.
She keeps writing until she can no longer hold the pen.
She dies May 10th 1847. Thirty two years old. Her last conscious thought is of her five year old daughter Eleanor. Fate unknown. Brigid dies not knowing if Eleanor survived.
That unknowing does not die with her — it travels.
September 10th 2025. Paxton, Illinois.
Erin opens her back door.
She is married to Joe. Mother of Rosie and Theo. Living on three acres of flat land outside a small town in the middle of America's heartland. A ordinary life. A good life.
On this particular morning two things happen simultaneously.
A smell arrives at her back door that she cannot identify and cannot explain. It will not leave.
And her doctor calls with the results of her tests.
Pancreatic cancer. Approximately two years.
Erin's cancer is not separate from Brigid's unresolved weight.
It is the weight.
What follows is a journey across one hundred and eighty years and four thousand miles. A genealogist. A bloodline traced back through seven women. A small cloth doll with a blue ribbon made by a child's hands without knowing why. A grave in County Cork that has been waiting a long time for a particular visitor.
And a question that has needed answering since 1847.
What happens when Erin stands at that graveside is not something this page will tell you.
That detail lives in a document that exists solely for the agent or publisher who decides to take this journey further. If you're a writer reading this, you'll understand immediately why that document exists and why it stays private. If you're a reader — that feeling you have right now, that mild frustration at the withheld ending — that's exactly how it should feel.
That feeling has a name.
It's called wanting to read the book.
Clonfert — Coming 2027. Currently seeking traditional publication.
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