At a crossroads in her life, Gráinne Lyons set out to travel Ireland’s west coast on foot. She set a simple intention: to walk in the footsteps of eleven pioneering Irish women deeply rooted in this coastal landscape and explore their lives and work along the way. As a Londoner born to Irish parents, she also sought answers in her own identity.

As Gráinne heads north from Cape Clear Island where her great-grandmother was a lacemaker, she considers Ellen Hutchins, Maude Delap, Edna O’Brien, Granuaile and Queen Maeve among others from her unique perspective. Their homes – in places that are famously wild and remote – are transformed into sites of hope, purpose, opportunity and inspiration. Walking through this history, her journey reveals unexpected insight into emigrant identity, travelling alone, femininity and the trappings of an ‘ideal’ life.

Against the backdrop and power of this great ocean, Wild Atlantic Women will inspire the twenty-first-century reader and walker to keep going, regardless of the path.

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Wild Atlantic Women is a different, deeper narrative that gradually soaks into your consciousness, like soft rain soaks on to your skin in the remote coastal locations that Lyons visits. Lyon’s understated, luminous writing does justice to these diverse women who all shared this wild coastline.

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Although Lyons concentrates on her subjects, many of whom were from remote communities, like the best travel narratives there is an inner and outer journey as she reaches a crossroads in her own life.