On 2 September 1998 a fire in the cockpit sent Swissair Flight 111 plunging into the sea off the coast of Nova Scotia with the loss of all 229 men, women and children on board. Among them was Patty Eberhart, the author's sister.

Set in Dublin, New York City and Nova Scotia, this is the true story of how one family's life was ravaged by that terrible event.

Ivy Bannister takes us through the shock of Patty's death, and the painful practicalities of identifying remains and clearing out possessions. At the heart of this book lies the vivid portrait of Hortense, her eighty-year old bereaved mother and her struggle to survive the violent death of her elder daughter.

Through probing the past in the light of the present, Blunt Trauma explores the failures of familial relationships. Moving and sometimes startling, this intimate memoir will touch anyone whose family relationships have been less than perfect.

IVY BANNISTER is a native New Yorker, who has lived in Dublin for nearly forty years. She writes fiction, poetry, drama and, most recently this memoir. She has won the Hennessy and Francis MacManus awards for short fiction, the O.Z. Whitehead, Listowel and Mobil Ireland awards for her stage plays and the Listowel Short Collection award for her poetry. Her stories and poems have appeared in a number of anthologies and five of her radio dramas have been broadcast by RTÉ. A collection of stories, Magician, was published in 1996. Ivy Bannister is also among the distinguished writers to appear recently in New Dubliners, a collection celebrating 100 years of James Joyce's Dubliners.