A man content to let life pass him by, schoolteacher Stephen Griffin is about to experience a miracle. For a string quartet from Venice has arrived in County Clare and, with it, worldly and beautiful violinist Gabriella Castoldi, who inspires love in the awkward Stephen. Although the town's blind musician senses its coming, the greengrocer welcomes its sheer joy, and Stephen's ailing father fears its power, none could have foreseen how the magical force of passion would change not only Stephen's life but, in the most profound and startling ways, the lives of everyone around them. A tale of dreams, life, and love, AS IT IS IN HEAVEN affirms the acclaimed author of Four Letters of Love as one of today's master storytellers

Bedbound in her attic room beneath the falling rain, in the margin between this world and the next, Plain Ruth Swain is in search of her father. To find him, enfolded in the mystery of ancestors, Ruthie must first trace the jutting jaw lines, narrow faces and gleamy skin of the Swains from the restless Reverend Swain, her great-grandfather, to grandfather Abraham, to her father, Virgil — via pole-vaulting, leaping salmon, poetry and the three thousand, nine hundred and fifty eight books piled high beneath the two skylights in her room, beneath the rain. The stories — of her golden twin brother Aeney, their closeness even as he slips away; of their dogged pursuit of the Swains’ Impossible Standard and forever falling just short; of the wild, rain-sodden history of fourteen acres of the worst farming land in Ireland — pour forth in Ruthie’s still, small, strong, hopeful voice. A celebration of books, love and the healing power of the imagination, this is an exquisite, funny, moving novel in which every sentence sings

"Teige Foley was only a boy when his mother vanished angrily into the Irish mist and the family's great adventure began. His father, Francis, a man of thwarted dreams, dared to steal a valuable telescope from the manor house where he worked. More than a spyglass, it was his passage to the stars, to places he could not otherwise go. And its theft forced Francis Foley and his four sons to flee the narrow life of poverty that imprisoned them." But Ireland was a country "wilder than it is now." Torn apart by the violent countryside, the young boys would lose sight of their father, and each would have to find his own path…Tomas, the eldest, weak for the pleasures of the flesh…Finan, who would chase his longings across the globe…Finbar, Finan's twin, surrendering to other people's magic…and Teige, the youngest, the one who has a way with horses, the only one to truly return home. From boarding house to gypsy caravans, from the sere fields where potatoes wither on their stalks to fertile new lands on the other side of the earth, apart and adrift, reunited and reborn, they would learn about the callings of God, the power of love, and the meaning of family in a place where stars look down — and men look up