First published 2026
Cal comes back to the remote Scottish croft where he spent his childhood. The windswept landscape holds two powerful forces that shaped him: his father John, who tends sheep, weaves cloth, and stands firm in their Presbyterian church, and his grandmother Ella from Glasgow, who has maintained an uneasy truce with her son-in-law for years. Cal searches the empty hills for connection, hoping to find other men like himself in this isolated place. His father John looks at Cal's long hair with disapproval and worries that his son refuses salvation. The seasons turn slowly in this barren country. Grandmother Ella watches from her position between the two men. The small community exists in delicate balance, but that balance grows more precarious with each passing day. Cal must navigate between his father's rigid faith and his own yearning for something else entirely. The bonds that hold this fragile world together begin to strain and tangle, threatening to unravel everything they have built on these desolate moorlands.
Genres: fiction, drama, literary-fiction, historical-fiction, 20th-century, family-drama
Vibes: atmospheric, emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: fish-out-of-water, found-family
Setting: Glasgow, Scotland
Period: 20th-century
416 pages · Hardcover · Grove Press