First published 2001
Jamie Bawn comes home to Scotland to sit vigil beside his dying grandfather Hugh. The old man lies in one of the concrete towers he constructed during his heyday as a visionary housing developer after World War II. Hugh once believed he could transform how ordinary Scots lived. He built entire neighborhoods, dreaming of better lives for working families. Now his modernist buildings crumble around him. As Jamie keeps watch, he pieces together his family's story across three generations. He traces how pride twisted into self-deception, how Catholic devotion mixed with Scottish nationalism, how political dreams soured into disillusionment. The men in his family drank too much and promised too much. They believed in progress that never came. Jamie must reckon with what his grandfather built and what he destroyed. He sees how public ambitions shaped private failures. The story moves between past and present as Jamie confronts the weight of family legacy and the gap between utopian hopes and human reality.
Genres: historical-fiction, 20th-century, 21st-century, family-drama
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: generational-saga, legacy, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Scotland
Period: World War II
304 pages · Paperback · Mariner Books