Blood and Water

Susan arrives on Dune Island with a plan, settle her late uncle's estate, sign the papers, and leave within a week. The inheritance is simple, a weathered cottage, a small distillery, a stubborn dog named Walter.  On paper, nothing she couldn't sort in a week.

Except Susan isn't just there to close a chapter. She's running, from Jen, from a loss she cannot yet name, and from a life that has quietly unravelled.

But Dune Island has been keeping its own secrets.

Cut off on the edge of the Wild Atlantic Way, where the ferry runs on Mick's time and every glance carries a question, Susan begins to uncover what her uncle Frank left behind, not just property, but a lifetime of silence. And the longer she stays, the more the island reveals, buried stories, unspoken grief, a family history shaped as much by what was hidden as by what was known.

And as the past begins to surface, Susan must confront the truths she came to escape.

She came to Dune Island to be alone. The island had other ideas.

Blood and Water is a haunting, beautifully observed novel about identity, inheritance, and the quiet devastations that echo through generations. With warmth, wit, and emotional precision, Rebecca Murphy introduces a striking new voice in fiction, one that lingers long after the final page.

Winner of the RTÉ Today Show Novel Competition



Rebecca Murphy is a writer from Cork, living in Wicklow with her wife and two dogs. Blood and Water is her debut novel. She was the winner of the RTÉ Today Show novel competition and the recipient of a Faber Academy Scholarship. Her influences range from Anne Enright to Stephen King, by way of Maeve Binchy. She has a degree in Drama and English from UCC.



A beautiful and important novel from a magnificently talented debut writer. Murphy's haunting exploration of love, longing and the ways we push people away even when we need them the most will stay with me for a very long time.



A complex, compelling and deeply moving story of loss, love and family.



Blood and Water is a profoundly moving exploration of identity, the shame that echoes through families and the silent grief of losing a long-held dream. The prose is vivid and beautiful. On the human condition, Murphy writes with wit and a startling clarity. Here is an astonishing new voice in literary fiction.



Blood and Water pulled me in from the first page and held me there. Rebecca Murphy writes with such warmth, wit and emotional honesty that the characters feel utterly real and heartbreakingly human. It's the kind of book you fall into completely, emerging hours later feeling like you've been somewhere else for a while. Tender, atmospheric and quietly powerful, this is a beautiful debut that will stay with readers long after they turn the final page.