Lough Glass is at the heart and soul of the namesake town clinging to its shore. They say that if you go out on St. Agnes' Eve and look into the lake at sunset you can see your future. But beneath its serene surface, the lake harbors secrets as dark and unfathomable as the beautiful woman who walks beside its waters.
Lough Glass is home to Kit McMahon, in a way it will never be to her ravishing mother, Helen, the Dubliner with film-star looks who found an unlikely mate in genial chemist Martin McMahon. Kit adores her mother, but can't escape the memory of her, seen through a window, alone at the kitchen table, eyes wide, blind, tears streaming down her face. Kit's best friend and enemy, Clio Kelly with her casual cruelties and unexpected kindnesses, is first to share the gossip about the exotic and elusive Helen - until the terrible night Martin's boat is found drifting upside down in the lake. The night Helen is lost. The night Kit discovers a letter from her mother on Martin's pillow and burns it, unopened, in the grate. The night everything changes forever.
As Kit and Clio are swept into passionate young adulthood, Kit is haunted by an unspoken guilt - for which only Sister Madeleine, the hermit who lives in the woods, can offer absolution - and by a dream of the life that might have been. In The Glass Lake, Maeve Binchy explores the unspoken language between mothers and daughters in an extraordinary story of a mother's secret, a daughter's courage, and the hidden bond between them that neither deceit nor death can destroy.