**Paperback edition**
Decades after spending a summer in the Irish countryside with her parents—author Deborah Love and National Book Award winner Peter Matthiessen—Rue takes her young family back to Ireland to revisit locales from that season in the sixties. As a guide, she has her mother's poetic book, Annaghkeen, named for the castle that overlooked their home in Galway.
What begins as a simple, nostalgic trip quickly becomes something far more complex. As Rue approaches Annaghkeen Castle and digs deeper into her parents’ literary legacy, a trove of memories is unearthed, forcing her to reckon with a childhood fraught with the stormy energy of two brilliant parents often at odds with each other and their children.
Both a rich and informative travelogue and a profoundly emotional memoir, Castles & Ruins celebrates the triumph of creative success while frankly appraising the often-terrible costs a family must pay for it.
Author Bio:
Rue Matthiessen is based on the East End of Long Island and in New York City. At Bard College she majored in literature, and afterwards was a journalist for The East Hampton Star. She had her own photography studio in Los Angeles for six years. Her essays and short fiction have been published in numerous literary journals. Her book, Buttonwood Cottage, about renovating a house in the Caribbean, is available on Amazon. She is currently at work on a novel, Julia with Closed Eyes. Recently, Rue was featured in the Bridgehampton Museum’s Distinguished Lecture Series and other speaking engagements. See more at ruematthiessen.com