Diaspora Hearts

Aisling thought distance would fix it.

One flight. One suitcase. One clean break from Belfast—its gossip, its silence, and the family who looked at her like she'd turned into a stranger in her own kitchen.

Toronto is supposed to be a restart: long shifts, quiet streets, new routines. A place where nobody knows her name, or what she's done. But loneliness has a way of echoing, and some homes follow you across oceans.

Then she meets Mark O'Connor—steady hands, quiet humour, and a life built from the same kind of Irish inheritance: stories, stubbornness, and a heart that doesn't scare easily. He's the sort of man who fixes what's broken without making you feel like the damage is who you are.

As Aisling begins to rebuild, the past refuses to stay buried. A letter arrives. Belfast calls. And the question stops being can she start again—and becomes can she go back and face what she left behind… without losing the life she's finally begun to claim?

Diaspora Hearts is an emotionally grounded Irish romance about exile and belonging, the families who wound us, and the love that helps us come home—first to ourselves, and then to everything we were afraid to face.