For Many a Long Day

County Armagh, 1932. For Sam Hamilton and Robert Scott, the world has changed greatly since the days when they played together outside their fathers'' forge. Now in their fifties, with families of their own, they are grateful to have work at a time of mass-unemployment and little security for many of those who do have jobs. Focusing on the heartache of Sam''s younger son and namesake, and the loneliness and anxiety of Robert''s beloved youngest daughter, Ellie, For Many a Long Day is a story of courage and friendship, of disappointment and achievement, and most of all, of the final triumph of patience and love.

Anne Doughty was born in Armagh. She is the author of A Few Late Roses (longlisted for the Irish Times fiction prize), Stranger in the Place and Summer of the Hawthorn. After many years in England she returned to Belfast in 1998 and wrote the first of a series of stand-alone novels that make up the Hamiltons sequence.