Bad Things Happen

Aengus lives in a vibrant new city, among charming new friends, with a thriving career. He could never know that, just a scratch below the surface of his world, lurks emptiness and aimlessness.


And when his wife is killed in a traffic accident, the thin veneer is suddenly and irredeemably ripped away. He tries to relocate his place in the world, to re-establish his path and purpose, but he can’t. All at once he is an outsider among friends he no longer recognises, in a place that has become suddenly sinister. A place where he doesn’t really belong.


And so he seeks out the only person who can give him back a little piece of what he has lost – the daughter they gave up for adoption some twenty years before. His search takes him home to Ireland and face-to-face with the father with whom he has endured a fractured relationship. It throws into question the certainties that have guided his life, the lighthouses by which he has navigated its course. He discovers a sense of belonging with people he left behind years before. In places long-forgotten. In dreams he once coveted but never dared to grasp.