Long Island by Colm Tóibín – 15/20 Books of Summer

In Brooklyn (2009), Eilis Lacey was encouraged by her sister Rose to leave her small town in Ireland for better employment prospects in New York. She finds a job in a department store and takes bookkeeping classes at night but is lonely. Eventually, she began attending Friday night dances with a friend and meets an Italian-American plumber. When she gets bad news from home that Rose has died, Tony persuades her to get married secretly before she returns to Ireland to be with her mother.