From the author of "Brooklyn" comes a short, powerful novel about one of the most famous mothers in history. In a voice that is both tender and filled with rage, "The Testament of Mary" tells the story of a cataclysmic event which led to an overpowering grief. For Mary, her son has been lost to the world, and now, living in exile and in fear, she tries to piece together the memories of the events that led to her son's brutal death. To her he was a vulnerable figure, surrounded by men who could not be trusted, living in a time of turmoil and change. As her life and her suffering begin to acquire the resonance of myth, Mary struggles to break the silence surrounding what she knows to have happened. In her effort to tell the truth in all its gnarled complexity, she slowly emerges as a figure of immense moral stature as well as a woman from history rendered now as fully human. Colm Toibin was born in Ireland in 1955. He is the author of six novels, including "The Blackwater Lightship", "The Master", both of which were shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and "Brooklyn", which won the Costa Novel Award, and two collections of stories, "Mothers and Sons" and "The Empty Family".