'Oh mother, if only you knew. But you were dead by the time I did something truly wicked, something truly... unforgivable.'
Alison Ryan is besotted with Malcolm, her married lover, father of two boys and a teacher at the same school where she works. When she accidentally becomes pregnant, and before she has a chance to tell Malcolm, she learns to her horror that his wife Emily, is also expecting - but far more catastrophic for Alison is that Malcolm ends their relationship in favour of his wife and family.
Distraught and spiralling into depression, Alison bitterly resents that Emily's child, Ciara, will have a loving home and family that she wants for her own baby, Amy.
In a moment of madness, she commits a truly unforgivable act.
No one knows what she has done, but her conscience hounds her. She runs from her life and job in Dublin and makes a new life for herself in Galway, until a wonderful man falls in love with her. Then she runs to the ends of the earth - to Brazil.
Barbara McKeon has had 11 radio plays and three television dramas produced by RTE. Numerous short stories have been published in newspapers, magazines, anthologies, and broadcast on radio.
For most of her life she was a journalist, primarily associated with The Irish Press, and later writing for other national and local papers and periodicals.
Originally from Dublin, she worked in the United Nations in New York, and in Rio de Janiero, brazil and Montevideo, Uruguay, where she taught English. She now resides with her husband Paul in the countryside near Kinvara, Co. Galway.
Unforgivable is Barbara's first novel and borrows some of her experiences from living abroad.
