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All around this small clifftop habitation, the wild land was working day and night over the centuries, silently, imperceptibly, to reclaim what it knew to be its own.  The years had whittled away at the village until only its strongest and most tenacious inhabitant was left.  Alasdair Mòr, great in love as he was great in strength, held on to this life with a steeled and unmoving passion.

 

For 45 years Alasdair Mór’s life has been one of peace on his croft out on an Atlantic headland.  But when the first gales of winter leave his lobster creels unscathed and his good fortune is mentioned one evening in the local bar, a storm of another kind blows up.

 

This is a depiction of a man’s bond with the earth and his ultimate refusal to betray it, even under attack from a jealous and embittered neighbour.

 

“Vigorous narrative, at times positively heroic, is but one of Mr Cooper’s formidable skills.”
New Statesman

 

“That it’s possible to be completely original within the confines of formal fiction is demonstrated with great force by Dominic Cooper’s outstanding first novel.”
Sunday Times

 

“The whole book is full of the sights and sounds and smells of a Hebridean island and an almost medieval sense of kinship with beasts and birds and the land itself which effectively contribute to the fabulous nature of the story.”
Scotsman

 

Read the first chapter for free, here.

 

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Additional information

Format

Paperback

Edition

Third

Publisher

Thirsty Books, Edinburgh

Publication date

2010

Foreign editions

French, Spanish, Italian