Neil Miller Gunn Books

When the sheer intensities of family life become too much for eight-year-old Art, it is to Old Hector that he turns for comfort. Thwarted from fulfilling his burning desire to go to the River, he seeks out the old man who can still poach a salmon with the best when he chooses. Through Old Hector's tales and his own experiences, Young Art gradually learns about the painful business of growing up.Young Art and Old Hector shows Neil Gunn's artistry at its very best; above all, his genius for clothing a simple story of Caithness crofter-fishermen in the rich garb of myth. It is also one of the finest evocations of childhood ever written, conveying all the magic and misery and the bursting joys of being a small boy in the great and mysterious world.

The tale of lives won from a cruel sea and crueller landlords. The dawning of the herring fisheries brought with it the hope of escape from the Highland Clearances, and this story paints a vivid picture of a community fighting against nature and history, and refusing to be crushed.

At the heart of The Silver Bough is a cairn on a knoll surrounded by standing stones. This is of professional interest to an archaeologist, around whom the story revolves. The life-enhancing qualities of the crofting family with whom he lodges and the quiet tenor of Highland life bear a curious similarity to his speculations on how 'the cairn people' lived in the distant past. His ideas spread outwards like ripples in a loch, fascinating his colleagues and giving some meaning to the life of a neighbouring landowner, who is mentally scarred from his experiences in the War. The plot of the book is imaginative and intricate, and includes the mystery of skeletons found in a cist in the cairn. As the dig proceeds, gold is discovered and then disappears. Has it been taken by the lad the archaeologist has been employing and, if so, where is it? The search is on and the standing stone claims its sacrificial victim.