On this occasion, though, it is a warning shot fired above the silhouetted heads that sends them retreating, saving the estate from being set ablaze. The sheepdogs that alarmed the Gaults of previous trespasses had since been poisoned. In the early morning of June the twenty-first, nineteen twenty-one, three arsonists ? shadows in the night - arrive at Lahardane, the home of Captain Everard Gault, his wife, Heloise, and daughter, Lucy. It is enough to note that Trevor's characteristic depth and emotional complexity are fully realized here in the watchful reticence of his young heroine and the strange but beautiful way she finds to express her own forgiveness. Revealing more of the plot will spoil this lovely novel for its many readers. She spends her childhood waiting to be forgiven for her wicked act, postponing all happiness until she can be reunited with her mother and father. Eventually she makes it back to the house to find her parents gone.
But Lucy has not killed herself she's only broken her leg in the woods. Days later, they leave Lahardane, choosing not to settle in England, as they had planned, but to roam Europe in their grief, leaving no forwarding address. Her parents, finding a scrap of her clothing on the beach, assume the worst. The day before her family is scheduled to flee Ireland, leaving the house and furnishings in the care of trusted servants, Lucy runs away. Eight-year-old Lucy is in love with Lahardane: the old house itself, the woods, the nearby beach, the shells and fir cones and sticks that she collected like treasure.
A difficult novel for any parent to read, William Trevor's The Story of Lucy Gault recounts the tale of a young girl whose Protestant family is driven from its rural Irish home in 1921.
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