The Fox's Walk - Paperback

by Annabel Davis-Goff (Author)

Alice Moore is eight years old and has just been left in the care of her autocratic grandmother at Ballydavid, a lovely old house in the south of Ireland. It is 1915, the First World War has just entered its second year, and, in Ireland, Nation-alists are edging toward revolution. Often lonely and homesick, living in a rigid old-fashioned household where propriety is all-important, Alice pieces together the world around her from overheard conversations, servants' gossip, and her own quiet observations. She soon realizes that her family's privilege is maintained at great cost to others. With the war always in the background, blood is spilled closer to home, and tensions mount. Divided in her loyalties and affections, Alice must choose between her heritage of privilege, her growing moral conscience, and the demands of the future.

Front Jacket

Set in Ireland during the period leading up to the Easter Rising in 1916, The Fox's Walk is Annabel Davis-Goff's finest novel yet -- a captivating portrait of a family and a way of life that will be changed forever by the First World War.
Alice Moore is eight years old in 1915 when her parents leave her with her autocratic grandmother at Ballydavid, a beautiful old house in the South of Ireland. Often lonely and homesick, living in a rigid, old-fashioned household where more is said than is spoken, Alice is forced to piece together her world from overheard conversations, servants' gossip, and her own quiet observations.
Alice comes to love Ireland and to consider Ballydavid her home. She also comes to understand that her family's privilege is maintained at a cost to others and is based on prejudice, exclusion, and injustice to those outside the small closed circle of the Anglo-Irish. Outside the circle, but important in Alice's life are a psychic countess down on her luck, a Catholic boy whom Alice hero-worships, an admired governess, as well as many of their neighbors.
In the background always is the Great War. The sons of some of the local farm laborers serve in the English army, but others, Irish Nationalists, are edging toward revolution. Sir Roger Casement, a revolutionary whose antecedents are not so different from Alice's, is actively working for the cause of Irish independence. In the aftermath of the rising, Casement is convicted of treason and hanged. Horrified by the lengths to which the English government will go to regain control over Ireland and divided in her loyalties and affections, Alice must finally choose between her heritage of privilege, her growing moral and political conscience, and the demands of the future.

Back Jacket

Impossible to predict and deeply fitting. --The New York Times Book Review
It is 1915 and eight year-old Alice Moore has just been left in the care of her autocratic grandmother at Ballydavid, a lovely old house in the south of Ireland. At first lonely and homesick, Alice gradually becomes involved in the lives of a Catholic boy whom she hero-worships, a psychic countess down on her luck, an admired governess and colorful neighbors. In the background always is the Great War, and in Ireland there is the threat of revolution. While the family mourns an uncle killed in France, blood is spilled closer to home. As tensions mount, Alice must choose between her heritage of privilege, her growing moral conscience, and the demands of the future.
"Has the same alert phrasing, wry humor, and exquisite detail as its predecessors."--The Washington Post Book World

Annabel Davis-Goff is the author of The Dower House and This Cold Country, both New York Times Notable Books, and of Walled Gardens, a memoir. Born in County Waterford, Ireland, she lives in New York City.