Excerpt from The Wonder by Emma Donoghue, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

"The hungry season," muttered the driver.

But this was high summer. How could food be scarce now, of all times?

Her boots were speckled with mud and gravel spat up by the wheel. Several times the jaunting car lurched into a dun puddle deep enough that she had to cling to the bench so as not to be flung out.

More cabins, some with three or four windows. Barns, sheds. A two-storey farmhouse, then another. Two men turned from loading a wagon, and one said something to the other. Lib looked down at herself: Was there something odd about her travelling costume? Perhaps the locals were so shiftless, they'd break off work to goggle at any stranger.

Up ahead, whitewash glared from a building with a pointed roof and a cross on top, which meant a Roman Catholic chapel. Only when the driver reined in did Lib realize that they'd arrived at the village, although by English standards it was no more than a sorry-looking cluster of buildings.

She checked her watch now: almost nine, and the sun hadn't set yet. The pony dropped its head and chewed a tuft. This appeared to be the sole street.

"You're to put up at the spirit grocery."

"I beg your pardon?"

"Ryan's." The driver nodded left to a building with no sign.

This couldn't be right. Stiff after the journey, Lib let the man hand her down. She shook her umbrella at arm's length, rolled the waxy canvas, and buttoned it tight. She dried her hand on the inside of her cloak before she stepped into the low-beamed shop.

The reek of burning peat hit her. Apart from the fire smouldering under a massive chimney, only a couple of lamps lit the room, where a girl was nudging a canister into its row on a high shelf.

"Good evening," said Lib. "I believe I may have been brought to the wrong place."

"You'll be the Englishwoman," said the girl slightly too loudly, as if Lib were deaf. "Would you care to step into the back for a bit of supper?"

Lib held her temper. If there was no proper inn, and if the O'Donnell family couldn't or wouldn't accommodate the nurse they'd hired, then complaining would be no use.

She went through the door beside the chimney and found herself in a small, windowless room with two tables. One was occupied by a nun whose face was almost invisible behind the starched layers of her headdress. If Lib flinched a little, it was because she hadn't seen the like for years; in England religious sisters didn't go about in such garb for fear of provoking anti-Romish sentiment. "Good evening," she said civilly.

The nun answered with a deep bow. Perhaps members of her order were discouraged from speaking to those not of their creed, or vowed to silence, even?

Lib sat at the other table, facing away from the nun, and waited. Her stomach growled—she hoped not loudly enough to be heard. There was a faint clicking that had to be coming from under the woman's black folds: the famous rosary beads.

When at last the girl brought in the tray, the nun bent her head and whispered; saying grace before the meal. She was in her forties or fifties, Lib guessed, with slightly prominent eyes, and the meaty hands of a peasant.

An odd assortment of dishes: oat bread, cabbage, some kind of fish. "I was rather expecting potatoes," Lib told the girl.

" 'Tis another month you'll be waiting for them."

Ah, now Lib understood why this was Ireland's hungry season—potatoes weren't harvested until the autumn.

Everything tasted of peat, but she set about clearing her plate. Since Scutari, where the nurses' rations had been as short as the men's, Lib had found herself incapable of wasting a bite.

Noise out in the grocery, and then a party of four squeezed into the dining room. "God save all here," said the first man.

Excerpted from The Wonder by Emma Donoghue. Copyright © 2016 by Emma Donoghue. Excerpted by permission of Little Brown & Company. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.