Nora endures a steady stream of neighbors offering condolences after her husband Maurice's recent death.

Nora drives alone to the family's holiday cottage in Cush and privately resolves to sell it.

Nora tells her sons Donal and Conor that the beloved holiday cottage in Cush must be sold.

A neighbor, Mrs. Whelan, delivers a message from the Gibney family offering Nora her old job back.

Nora visits Peggy Gibney to discuss returning to work and learns that Francie Kavanagh now manages the office.

On Nora's first day at Gibney's, Francie makes her wait and then subjects her to a bookkeeping test.

Nora exposes the salesmen's unequal pay rates to the workers, causing outrage, then takes scissors from Francie's hand and leaves.

Nora encounters Sister Thomas while driving and is bluntly told that the time for grieving is over.

Nora renegotiates her position with Peggy Gibney, securing half-day hours and no contact with Francie.

The Gibney office staff secretly vote to join the Irish Transport and General Workers' Union.

Phyllis introduces Nora to music teacher Laurie O'Keefe, who begins giving Nora regular singing lessons.

Nora auditions for the Wexford choir but is openly insulted and dismissed by choirmaster Frank Redmond.

British soldiers shoot unarmed protesters in Derry; Aine disappears for days before being found at a Dublin protest.

Delirious from pain and sleeplessness, Nora hallucinates Maurice sitting in her room and warning her about Conor's future.

Nora burns Maurice's love letters in the fireplace and tells Conor she will be performing in a new choir.

Nora Webster begins with the recently widowed Nora struggling to cope with grief, financial precarity, and the suffocating sympathy of her small Irish community. Faced with mounting money worries, she reluctantly accepts a job offer from her former employers, the Gibney family, only to find herself embroiled in office conflict and workplace injustice. A confrontation over workers' pay forces a dramatic break, but Nora gradually renegotiates her way back on her own terms, slowly reclaiming agency over her life. She discovers a long-dormant passion for music through singing lessons with the eccentric Laurie O'Keefe, which begins to unlock the grief she has kept buried. The violence of Bloody Sunday reaches into the family when Aine disappears for days, and Nora's physical and emotional breakdown culminates in a haunting vision of Maurice. By the novel's end, she burns his love letters and joins Laurie's choir, finally choosing to move forward.

Nora Webster's path from widowhood to self-renewal.

Nora takes Donal and Conor by train to Dublin to visit their eldest sister, Fiona.

Aunt Josie pays an unannounced visit bearing old family photographs; Donal's stammer noticeably worsens in her presence.

Nora drives to Josie's house to confront her about the boys, and Josie explains that they were waiting for Nora.

Nora impulsively agrees to have her hair dyed at the salon and is mortified by the fashionable result.

Nora's sister Una casually mentions having heard a rumor that Nora is returning to work at Gibney's.

Nora agrees to let Donal and Conor stay up late to watch the tense film Gaslight on television.

Fiona quietly abandons her plans to continue studying in Dublin in order to find work closer to home.

Jim and Margaret surprise Donal at Christmas by revealing they have converted a spare room into a photography darkroom.

Gibney's truck driver Mick Sinnott visits Nora's home to secretly invite her to join a workers' union.

Neighbor Nancy Brophy asks Nora to help run a Guinness-sponsored pub quiz in the parish halls near Blackwater.

Nora and a tipsy Phyllis perform a disastrous, stilted rendition of Brahms's Lullaby in front of the pub quiz crowd.

Nora takes her four children on a caravan holiday to the beach at Curracloe.

Donal obsessively photographs the Apollo moon landing as it plays on a hotel television screen.

Aine appears on the Late Late Show and publicly calls on the Irish government to get its own house in order.

Nora watches Phyllis staking out a negligent painter from her car and is inspired to redecorate her own house.

While Nora navigates grief and financial worry, a series of smaller events reveal the texture of daily life for the Webster family and those around them. Her children each process the loss of their father in distinct ways, and Nora's relationships with her sisters, brother-in-law, and community are shaped by moments of awkwardness, generosity, and suppressed feeling. At work, office politics and social maneuvering fill the hours, while at home, small surprises — a new haircut, a late-night film, a caravan holiday — mark the slow passage of time. Nora's social world gradually widens through unexpected friendships and a comical pub quiz night, while Donal retreats further into photography and Aine grows increasingly passionate about politics. Together, these events trace the gradual, uneven rhythm of a family learning to live without Maurice, neither healing cleanly nor standing still.

The family's quiet struggles and small moments of change.

Conor tells Nora that Donal moans every night in his sleep, revealing the depth of the boy's hidden suffering.

Nora confesses to her sister Catherine that she and Maurice had no savings and the widow's pension is very small.

Elizabeth casually reveals at work that Nora's sister Una is now engaged to a man named Seamus.

A civil rights march in Derry is violently broken up by police, prompting Jim to reflect on what Maurice would have said.

Una visits Nora at home to formally announce her engagement; Nora realizes that her sisters are afraid of her.

Peggy Gibney reveals that Sister Thomas once threatened William's father to ensure Peggy could marry William.

Nora joins Una and Seamus at the golf club and meets Elizabeth's boyfriend Ray, who quietly begs her to stay silent.

Nora begins attending the Gramophone Society's listening sessions and finds herself unexpectedly moved by classical music.

Nora visits the Radfords' home for an evening, selects Beethoven's Archduke Trio from their collection, and borrows the record.

Nora travels to Spain with Josie and secretly relocates to a small basement room to finally sleep alone in peace.

Nora threatens to picket the Christian Brothers' school with a sign reading 'I DEMAND JUSTICE' until Conor is returned to his class.

Nora purchases a record player and buys Beethoven's Archduke Trio record for herself, exceeding her original budget.

After Nora's humiliating audition, Laurie drives to choirmaster Frank Redmond's house and confronts him in a towering rage.

Donal confesses to Nora that every room in his current school is a painful reminder of his dead father.

Friends arrive at the house to empty Maurice's clothes from the wardrobe; Laurie invites Nora to sing in her new choir.

Beneath the surface of Nora's daily life, a series of revelations and quiet turning points gradually shift the course of her recovery. Early on, the hidden depth of Donal's suffering is exposed, and Nora is forced to confront truths about her family dynamics and financial vulnerability that she has been avoiding. Unexpected disclosures — about her sister's secret engagement, her employer's scandalous past, and the political violence unfolding in the north — illuminate how much has been kept from Nora, even as she keeps things from others. Her growing appetite for music, classical records, and independent travel marks a slow but unmistakable inner awakening, while practical victories like defending Conor against the Christian Brothers signal a new forcefulness in her character. By the end, the most significant turning points are deeply personal: a son's brave confession about grief, a wardrobe emptied of a dead man's clothes, and a woman finally choosing to sing.