Salt and Skin

‘Until recently, there had been four of them. Unspeaking, the three remaining Managans lugged their bags into Ewan’s waiting car. Luda and her children were not staying in the ghost house on Seannay that first night. The window broken in the storm must first be fixed. Living on the islands means being in constant conversation with the wind; negotiating where it will and will not go.

The Managans do not know this yet. It is a lesson they will begin to learn a week later, watching the cliff collapse into the sea.’

Luda, a photographer, and her two teenagers arrive in the Scottish Northern Isles to make a new life. Everywhere the past shimmers to the surface; the shifting landscapes and wild weather dominates; the line between reality and the uncanny seems thin here. The teenagers forge connections, making friends of neighbours, discovering both longing and dangerous compulsions. But their mother – fallible, obsessive, distracted – comes up hard against suspicion. The persecution and violence that drove the island’s historic witch trials still simmers today, in isolated homes and church buildings, and where folklore and fact intertwine.

A compelling and magically immersive novel about a family on the edge and a community ensnared by history, that gathers to an unforgettable ending.