Bray

Bray, located in County Wicklow on the eastern coast of Ireland, is a bustling town surrounded by farms and hills. Bray is the hometown of Colm, Dan Sean, Eoin Brennan, and numerous other characters in the novel. Bray is home to a carnival along the beach, and Bray is the town to which Maggie, Ronnie, Laura, and Colm move at the beginning of the novel. The town of Bray itself is medium in size, large enough to have popular retail stores, but also small enough to enable gossip and make anonymity impossible. Maggie, at first bitterly lonely in Bray, comes to fall in love with the land and the town. When the novel ends, instead of returning to Chicago, Maggie decides to stay on in Bray with Eoin.

Chicago

Chicago is a major city in Illinois, and is home to a massive population of Irish-Americans. Chicago is the...