The serpent

Opening with a premonition of death, this is the story of a young man's conflict with the spiritual authority of his father, of a spirit of skepticism set against an authoritarian Calvinism.

This conflict succeeds in bringing alive both the psychological and economic position of the Highlands in the early years of the 20th century: the book as a whole gives a powerful vision of what the Highlands might have been but for the Clearances.