Wild Houses

Set in the small town of Ballina in County Mayo, in the rural west of Ireland, the novel follows a tense weekend in which a teenage boy is kidnapped over his older brother's drug debt. The narrative alternates between two perspectives: Dev Hendrick, a reclusive young man coerced into harboring the hostage, and Nicky Hennigan, the hostage's 17-year-old girlfriend, who is drawn into a desperate effort to bring him home.

Late on a Friday night, Dev is dozing in his remote house when his phone buzzes three times, the prearranged signal from his cousins, Gabe and Sketch Ferdia, local enforcers who work for a drug boss named Mulrooney. Dev opens the door to find them dragging a pale, shaken teenager from their car. The boy, Doll English, has a cut above his eye and one sneaker missing. Gabe explains that Doll's older brother, Cillian English, owes Mulrooney a significant debt, and the Ferdias intend to hold Doll at Dev's house to pressure Cillian into paying. Dev has been storing drugs for Mulrooney at his isolated property for almost a year because he lives alone and sees no one. Months earlier, the brothers floated the idea of kidnapping Doll, but Dev dismissed it as drunken bluster. Doll makes a frantic escape attempt before Sketch subdues him, and the Ferdias lock him in the basement. Dev retreats to the garden with his small dog, Georgie, the only creature left from his late mother Moira's life.

That same Friday afternoon, before any of this happens, Nicky finishes a shift at the Pearl Hotel bar and drives Doll and his mother, Sheila English, into town. Sheila is heading to a counseling group for family members of people with alcohol addiction, a group she has attended since Doll and Cillian's father, Vincie, left the family and emigrated to Calgary. Nicky's parents both died of cancer when she was 10 and 11, leaving her older brother, Connor, a long-haul truck driver often away for weeks, as her guardian. After dropping Sheila off, a disheveled man from the adjacent psychiatric units approaches the car: Martin Hendrick, Dev's father, a former police officer institutionalized after a delusional episode in which he abducted a schoolteacher named Rachel Lacey. Neither Doll nor Nicky knows Martin's connection to Dev. He asks Doll to place a bet on a greyhound, and Doll reluctantly agrees.

Nicky and Doll visit Cillian and his girlfriend, Sara Duane. Cillian is a former teenage delinquent turned drug dealer, thrown out of Sheila's house about a year ago after a falling-out with his suppliers. Volatile and sharp-tongued, he recounts the story of Martin Hendrick's abduction of Lacey and makes a callous remark to Nicky about her parents' deaths. Before they leave, he tosses Doll a bag of weed to bring to a party. At the party that night, Nicky tells Doll he never asks what she wants and that he likes things easy. Doll, stung, storms off. His phone rings out, then goes dead. Nicky walks alone to the English house at three in the morning and climbs through Doll's bedroom window. His bed is empty, and the sight strikes her as wrong, like a mistake.

At Dev's house, the weekend passes in confined monotony. Dev remembers finding Moira collapsed in the garden after a heart attack; he had laughed at first, thinking she was playing a prank. Doll is brought up from the basement and installed on the sofa to watch films. Dev notices raw marks on Doll's wrists from being tied up at night but says nothing. He settles into his father's old red wingback chair, which triggers memories of Martin Hendrick's depressive cycles, days immobilized before the fire followed by manic bouts of restless activity. The narrative traces Dev's history of severe bullying in secondary school, where a popular older student named Joel Calmer escalated from shoving to public humiliation. Dev's instinct was total submission, which only enraged his tormentors. After his father's abduction of the teacher became public in fourth year, the student body treated Dev as invisible. One night he walked barefoot to a quarried hillside intending to jump but judged the drop insufficient. He sat in the cold until dawn. When he told his mother everything, Moira's response was direct: If he could get a job, forget school. Dev left at 16 and found work at a medical equipment factory, where older coworkers treated him with casual decency.

On Saturday evening, Nicky is working at the Pearl when a wiry, bony-faced man follows her into a back room and delivers a message: The Ferdias have Doll, and he will stay with them until Cillian pays what he owes by Monday night. The man steps on her foot and hits her leg to ensure she remembers. Guilt floods Nicky for interpreting Doll's silence all day as a sulk.

On Sunday, events escalate. At Dev's house, Doll reveals he met Martin Hendrick at the hospital and presses Dev to let him go. Dev suffers a severe panic attack. Gabe, assuming Doll provoked it, drags Doll to the bathroom, fills the tub, and forces his head underwater. Dev watches in paralysis until a clear thought arrives: Doll will drown. He pulls Gabe off balance and hurls Sketch into the bathroom cabinet, shattering the mirror. Doll surfaces, alive and gasping. Meanwhile, Nicky delivers the message to Sheila and Cillian. Cillian explains the debt: He had been holding 30,000 euros' worth of cocaine for Mulrooney in a hidden spot in Belleek Wood, a forest outside Ballina, but a turlough, a seasonal underground lake unique to the west of Ireland, flooded the spot and dissolved the stash. He has repaid roughly half but cannot raise the remaining 18,000 by Monday. Sheila slaps him and tells him Doll is innocent. That evening, Sheila calls Nicky and questions her about the Pearl's cash-handling procedures and her boss Kieron Flynn's Monday routine. Nicky, realizing what Sheila may be planning, provides the information.

On Monday, Cillian robs the Pearl. Nicky stalls Flynn outside while a masked figure with a cockeyed slant to his shoulders seizes the weekend's takings from Flynn's car. Nicky forces herself to close the service door slowly, determined to be able to say she saw nothing. That night, she drives Cillian to Belleek Wood for the exchange. In a dark clearing, Sketch counts the money: roughly 14,000 in notes and 600 in coins, 3,000 short of the 18,000 owed. Cillian promises the rest by Friday. Gabe releases Doll, who stumbles to Nicky. She grabs his arm. The Ferdias then beat Cillian severely, telling him never to show his face in Ballina again.

Back at Dev's house, the brothers announce that Mulrooney is shutting down the storage operation and plan to leave for Marbella. After they go, Dev sits alone on his bed, unable to move, recalling a therapist who once told him he was in a holding pattern, not holding out for anything. The shower runs uselessly across the hall.

Nicky drives Cillian and Doll to Sheila's house. Doll, eerily calm, reveals he was held in the basement of a man named Dev Hendrick. Cillian recognizes the name from school, but Doll says Dev was not the worst; the other two were making him do it. Sheila rushes out and hugs Doll, seeing the wounds on his wrists. Cillian tells her the Ferdias have ordered him to leave Ballina permanently and jokes about joining their father in Calgary. Standing by the car, Nicky notices Doll staring at the empty spot in the hedge where an old football used to sit, a ball she pulled out and discarded on Friday night. A recurring premonition surfaces: She and Doll will not last. She pushes the feeling away. For now, Doll is home and she helped bring him back. Sheila calls from the doorway, and Nicky takes Doll by the arm: "Come on, they're waiting for us" (255).