[Holliday is an American critic. In the following review, she relates the story line of Away.]

Jane Urquhart is an Irish Canadian who writes with the lilt of the Old Sod. Her third novel, Away, brings alive an old superstition linked to today's consciousness.

Away is the story of four generations of women, three of whom, in the author's words, are women of extremes. They either stay young into old age or age very young. They thrive near water. Men, states of mind, come and go. In the end, these bright, engaging women describe themselves as being "away."

The writing is poetic, musical, enhanced by the occasional Gaelic phrase. The message is mixed. At times it seems a plea for women's equality; again, it sees love as a fickle male domain, expressed in the words of an old Irish saying: "The most short-lived traces: the trace of a bird on a branch, the trace of a fish on a pool, the trace of a man on a woman."

Esther O'Malley Robertson, 82, is recalling the family history as she heard it at 12 from her grandmother, Old Eileen.

It starts in 1842 when the girl, Mary on Rathlin Island off the north Ireland coast, falls in love with a drowned sailor and, true to superstition, falls into the state of "away," the victim as it were, of the faerie daemons. Only we know of her quickness of mind, her avid curiosity.

In time, she weds the schoolmaster Brian O'Malley, gives him a son Liam and they flee the potato famine to the Canadian wilderness, creating "an acre of light" in the harsh terrain.

Overseas, Mary falls back into her old state after the birth of a daughter, Eileen, and vanishes in the forest, seeking "the darlin' one." Seven years later her frozen body is returned by Exodus Crow and his fellow Ojibway who had befriended the beautiful woman with the red-gold hair.

Eileen eventually falls under the sway of the charismatic nationalist Aidan Lanighan. He leaves her with the memory of his embrace and a gun for safe-keeping.

To the young Esther who will not always heed her words, Old Eileen confessed, "I've been away all my life…. If I were you I would be where I stand…. No more drifting."

But at another place, we hear the saddest words in this novel of knowledge-seeking women and wrong-footed love. Aidan is explaining to the young Eileen why he dances alone, that he has no partner.

"There's me," she said … "I danced with you once."

"Yes," he admitted, whirling away, "but you didn't know the steps."

Revolutions, one likes to think, have been fought for less.