When a storm in wrecked on a rocky Highland coast in a wild night, Charlie MacIan drags a drowning seaman out of the pounding waves. The seaman is clinging to a wooden chest. Brought into shelter, he is found to be dead but was his death accidental? And did the chest once contain money? These questions hang like a threat over the various members of a small community struggling to keep life going on a hard, relentless coast. It is a mystery in which Neil Gunn displays his skills as a writer of depth and subtlety and we emerge from the tale asking questions about the nature and meaning of community itself, and how it can survive in a bewildering and violent modernity."
- ISBN10 0862417708
- ISBN13 9780862417703
- Publish Date 1 January 2001
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 29 September 2014
- Publish Country GB
- Imprint Canongate Books
- Edition Main
- Format Paperback
- Pages 304
- Language English