Author: Williams, Gordon M. Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945)Published on 29 May 2025 by PAN MACMILLAN (Picador) in the United Kingdom.Paperback | 352 pages196 x 130 x 23 | 242g 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 HOMEIt’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
