Away by Jane Urquhart is a complex novel that mixes romance, politics and family into one flowing story. It follows the lives of many different characters, but is told through the memories of a woman named Esther. Esther tries to reconstruct her great-grandmother's past and the history of her entire family. Away is a gripping novel that captures the reader's attention from the first pages. The beginning of the novel introduces the reader to Esther O'Malley Robertson as the last of a family of extreme women. She sits in her house and remembers a story her grandmother told her a long time ago. Esther is the first character the reader is introduced to, but we don't really understand who she is until the end of the story. Esther's main struggle is dealing with the demolition of her house on Loughbreeze Beach and trying to understand the mysteries of her family's past. Mary is the next character the reader is introduced to and is a very important part of the story. One day, while Mary is at the beach, a body washes up on the shore along with many cabbages, kettles, and barrels of whiskey. He drags the body to the shore where it lies in the man's arms until he dies. This man was believed to be from an "other world" and this had a great effect on Mary. She falls in love with this sailor, even though he is dead, and this casts a sort of spell on her. Mary is known to the rest of the country as "via", which means that she is enchanted by this other world, the world of the sea. She felt as if her spirit was no longer in her human body and she no longer even considered herself Mary. The spirits of the lake had given her a new name, Moira, and that was what she preferred to call herself. The villagers had no hope, except Father Quinn. As the island's priest, Father Quinn feels he must bring Mary back to reality, but finds it nearly impossible. He turns to his friend Brian, who ends up convincing Mary to marry him. They have a son, Liam, and when famine and depression strike the island they live on, they are given the opportunity of a lifetime.