Stationed in Gallipoli during WWI, a wounded Scottish soldier finds love as he longs for home in this novel of memory, romance and the horror of war.
Gallipoli, 1916. A soldier in the British Army’s Lovat Scouts, Young Donald Peter Gillies, lies in a hospital bed, blinded by the Turks. There by his side is Louise, a Queen Alexandra Corps nurse, Louise, who cares for him and listens to his stories of home.
Donald paints a vivid picture of the western highlands coast, telling stories of how his family lived: bagpiping, sheep shearing, celidhs, illegal distilling, his mother saving the life of the people of St Kilda, the navvies building the west highland railway and the relationship between the lairds and the people. Louise in turn tells her own story of growing up in the Welsh valley: coal mining, a harsh and unforgiving upbringing.
But when they suddenly find themselves cut off from the allied troops, they must make a daring escape through Turkey to Greece. The first novel in Angus MacDonald’s acclaimed trilogy begins an epic tale spanning generation of war and of a single Scottish family.
