Blood Ties - Hardcover

Set mainly in Ireland, Jennifer Lash's dark, exhilarating novel is about the redemptive power of love. It tells of Violet Farr and her loveless marriage, her wild, unfathomable son and his illegitimate son, all of them bound together in a repeating pattern of exile and homecoming, rejection and, finally, acknowledgement and love. As Elizabeth Buchan wrote in the London Times, "Jennifer Lash is a Lawrentian in so far as she mines her material for the blood and thunder roaring between spouses, and between parents and children."

Jennifer Lash wrote her first novel, The Burial, at the age of 23 in 1961, and this was followed by four more during the next twenty years. She married Mark Fiennes and with their six children they moved between Ireland and England. In 1986 she learned she had cancer and, after a painful operation, embarked on a solitary pilgrimage through France to Santiago de Compostela, a journey about which she wrote in her book On Pilgrimage. Throughout her illness she continued to write, leaving Blood Ties, perhaps her finest work, behind. She died in 1993.


Jennifer Lash wrote her first novel, The Burial, at the age of 23 in 1961, and this was followed by four more during the next twenty years. She married Mark Fiennes and with their six children they moved between Ireland and England. In 1986 she learned she had cancer and, after a painful operation, embarked on a solitary pilgrimage through France to Santiago de Compostela, a journey about which she wrote in her bookOn Pilgrimage. Throughout her illness she continued to write, leaving Blood Ties, perhaps her finest work, behind. She died in 1993.