Sheltering Rain

Sheltering Rain is Jojo Moyes's first novel, and it opens in Hong Kong in 1953, where Joy meets Edward at a party on the night of the Coronation. The marriage that follows shapes three generations of women. Decades later, Sabine, sixteen and unhappy, is sent from London to rural Ireland to stay with grandparents she barely knows, in a house ruled by horses, dogs and things left unsaid. Her mother Kate, who left long ago, stands between them.

The novel moves between past and present, untangling the silences that pass from mother to daughter and the small misunderstandings that harden over years. The publisher's blurb carries a quoted endorsement calling it a favourite Jojo Moyes novel. It is an unhurried, generous family story for anyone who has wondered what their own mother never told them.