SHORTLISTED FOR THE FIRST EVER BOOKER PRIZE

'A masterpiece . . . demands to be read' - Douglas Stuart, author of SHUGGIE BAIN

'An extraordinary novel' - Michael Magee, author of CLOSE TO HOME

 It’s the west of Scotland in the 1950s. New houses are going up. Factories are opening. 

But Dunky Logan, a 15-year-old brought up in a tenement flat in working-class Kilcaddie, is ditching school to be a labourer on a local farm. Dead set on becoming a hard case, he wants to work shoulder to shoulder with so-called real men. Irish Catholic Mary O’Donnell arrives at the farmhouse as the new maid. She is pregnant - no boyfriend in sight. But she’s smart, and she has a plan to get herself up in the world. As Dunky is swallowed up by a vicious cycle of violence, betrayal, and booze, Mary becomes entangled in a savage family feud.

Now there’s no going back, not for either of them. With an introduction by James Robertson