Saoirse

 

🎧 Saoirse by Charleen Hurtubise is a character-driven novel that quickly pulls you in and doesn’t let go.

When we first meet Saoirse, her art career is about to shine on bright spotlight on her life.

But a decade ago she was Sarah, a frightened teenager desperate to escape danger and a childhood spent in trauma. In a split-second decision, she steals a passport and flees to Ireland. She reinvents herself with a new name and a carefully hidden past. For a while, it works. She builds a life. She finds love. She becomes an artist and a mother. 

But fear is a stubborn thing.

Eventually the walls of her new identity start to crack. The very success she’s worked so hard for threatens to expose the truth she’s been running from. And when the past refuses to stay buried, it’s not just her secret at risk — it’s the people she loves.

Hurtubise tells this story through a shifting timeline, moving between Sarah’s traumatic beginnings and the fragile present she’s built. The prose is atmospheric and emotional without ever tipping into melodrama. Ireland feels lush and grounding, almost like a character itself — a place of refuge, but never quite of safety.

At its heart, Saoirse is about identity, survival, and the cost of reinvention. It asks hard questions: Can you truly become someone new? Is freedom the same as escape? And how long can you live in the shadow of who you used to be?

The audiobook is beautifully done. Narrator Roisin Rankin delivers a nuanced, emotionally rich performance that brings both the raw vulnerability of teenage Sarah and the brittle composure of her adult self vividly to life. The setting, the tension, and the heartbreak is all on display. 

Thank you to Macmillan Audio for the gifted listen. Saoirse is out now.

About the Author

Charleen Hurtubise is a novelist, essayist, and artist. She is the author of The Polite Act of Drowning, published in Ireland and the UK in 2023. Saoirse is her US debut. She holds an M.Sc. from Trinity College Dublin and an MFA in creative writing from University College Dublin, where she has facilitated creative writing seminars. The sixth sister in a family of nine, she spent much of her childhood in Michigan, her early adult years in Boston, and has now lived half of her life in Ireland, which is home. Though she lives in Dublin with her Irish family, the pull of Donegal never leaves and continues to influence her drawings and writings, including Saoirse.