This novella is so beautiful and subtle that when I finished it on Tuesday evening, I reread it again on Wednesday. Rural Ireland, 1985, though it feels like it could be 1950 or even 1920 based on the poverty and culture. Bill Furlong delivers coal and supports—barely—a family of 7, yet it’s the small things he notices and does for his family and others that bring him some small joy and satisfaction amidst a life “carried on mechanically without pause to the next job.” And Furling wonders “what would life be like if they were given time to think and reflect over things?”

What he does end up thinking and reflecting over are the girls at the local convent where he delivers coal and where he discovers a young mother locked in the coal shed and girls who ask for a ride to the river so they can drown themselves or girls barefoot and dirty scrubbing polished, marble floors. This is a Magdalen laundry, a money-making business run by the Catholic Church with the support of the Irish government exploiting poor, pregnant, and/or difficult girls incarcerated behind glass topped walls and locked doors. Located all over the country, the last one was closed in 1996. Bill Furlong sees these girls—in a town where no one else does.