From the author of the prizewinning As the Women Lay Dreaming comes an evocative and deeply original novel that reimagines the lives of Hebrideans across the centuries, sweeping from the eighth century to the present day.
Interlinked stories unfold across generations, layered like blankets of peat, where fragments of earlier lives lie preserved and later resurface: a sword hidden by a Viking raider; a rosary left behind in a place of sanctuary by a troubled priest.
Past struggles, betrayals, loves and losses reverberate in the lives of modern islanders, woven and distilled by the legacies of the Clearances and devastating wars. Again and again, men and women return to the beehive-shaped stone shelter on a tiny island at the edge of the Loch of the Bees - a place of refuge, memory and renewal.
Here, the land keeps its secrets, and time curves back on itself, as the living find connection with those who came before.
"The past's current flows through the characters in his fiction so strongly that it almost becomes the story itself." David Robinson, Books from Scotland
"A beautiful and bittersweet portrait of an extraordinary place." Antonia Senior, The Times
