Jess grew up as a sheltered only child in a small city in England. Eventually, she gets her way about studying at a school about an hour's bus ride away from home, meeting Joe there. She eventually moves out of her parents' home and she and Joe have a child. A tragedy ensues and Jess ends up getting care in a mental facility, told by her parents that Joe has moved on from her.
It's seventeen years later. Jess's mother has just died. Her father has already been dead for years. Jess and her cousin Michael poke around in the attic and find a box of letters and postcards to Jess from Joe, that Jess had never been given. She decides to go on a journey to find Joe, enlisting her cousin, along with another friend, Belinda, who knows Joe. Instead of starting with the last place he had written from, Jess wants to follow the cities in order, in order to better understand Joe's own journey.
Will they find Joe? If so, will he have another partner? That's the risk of finding him. By the way, the characterizations of Michael and Belinda are great. The journey takes them to various cities in Ireland, England, and later, across the ocean. The relationships feel true and the uncertainty about whether they'll find Joe keeps one reading; I couldn't put this novel down.
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