The Wall of Swallows

About this book

In Vila Andorinha, a town stacked in white and blue above the Atlantic, everything of importance has happened beneath the swallows. Eleven thousand hand painted tiles cover the long wall of the old cannery, a flock of blue birds wheeling forever above the harbour, painted in 1934 by a woman the town still calls only the Widow. Weddings are photographed against it. Funerals pause beside it. Ines Almeida, thirty five, last painter of the Almeida tile workshop, learned her trade copying its birds. Now the cannery is sold. The hotel group's plans are elegant and funded, and their heritage architect, Daniel Rocha, has arrived from Lisbon with the gentlest job title on any demolition site. Neither of them expects what the wall has been hiding in its glaze for ninety years.