{"product_id":"9781781999486","title":"The Way We Danced","description":"Ruth Deacon s academic career is in the doldrums, her marriage is in shreds, an elderly relative with dementia has become an impossible burden. Ruth needs a miracle.\u003cp\u003eIt comes in the form of The Memory Book .\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eEdith Barratt, an elderly writer seeing out her last days in a nursing home, has decided to entrust a lifetime of writings to Ruth, to publish after her death. And, by also giving her the Memory Book , she breaks a lifetime of silence about a youthful love that has dominated her entire life.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eRuth eagerly seizes on this material it could rescue her career. When she discovers that Edith s one-time love was an idealistic soldier of the Third Reich, she is even more encouraged. But then she finds herself faced with a challenge: that of exploring the gap between memory and desire, reality and illusion. Did Edith s young German truly love her? And what is the significance of a half-remembered melody sung by Fred Astaire?\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eStarting in Belfast, moving through pre-war Berlin and returning to Ireland s tentative and fragile peace of 1995, Sophia Hillan s new novel traces a path to those things that cannot, in the end, be taken away.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Poolbeg Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47054142406896,"sku":"9781781999486","price":13.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9781781999486_p0.jpg?v=1763719195","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9781781999486","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}