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Annamoe is a tiny village in County Wicklow, 'a humpback bridge with the river flowing beneath, a post-office, one shop, a few whitewashed cottages'. Half a mile away is the large old Georgian rectory, set among brooding hills, beautiful in summer, harsh and lonely in winter.
To Annamoe rectory in 1957 came Vera Pettigrew, her husband Stanley and baby daughter. Where the River Flows is her entertaining and nostalgic account of the five and a half years they spent there, recording with a keen sense of humour and a sharp ear for dialogue the day-to-day activities of parish and family life, from fetes to festivals, from schools to scout camps.
But her story also stretches out to wider shores: growing up in Northern Ireland; the first curacy in Newcastle, County Down; the start of married life in Clontarf in Dublin; summers in Sligo and Connemara; Stanley's painting; her own love of animals and the joy and heartbreak they brought her; echoes of the past recalled by the names Barton, Childers and Synge. A picture of people and places in those remote parishes of Derralossary, Laragh and Calary.
