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Can a family escape its dark past to find happiness?

Buckie, Scotland 1918

Brothers James and Innes Lowrie return home to their wives and families after the war, Innes working for a shipbuilder and James returning to sea and the family's fishing business. Sister Bethany Pate and Innes have sons and heirs to go into the family business, but James does not. Innes takes in orphaned Etta Mulholland, adding to his already large family.

In 1931, as the new generation take the helm and pursue various careers in Buckie’s fishing industry, some are content to take on the roles their parents have chosen for them, while others rail against these strictures. Adam Pate longs to join the man he knows as his uncle, James, as a fisherman, while his mother wants him to study at university and to find a life far from the danger of discovering dark family secrets.

Trouble brews when Etta Mulholland begins work as a herring gutter, guided by her cousins, but new relationships set various family members against one another, and the family’s fortunes are threatened by external forces and the sea itself.

Is there light and happiness ahead for the hardworking families of Buckie or will discord from the past weave into their futures.

Storytelling at its best, Evelyn Hood is the original bestselling Scottish saga writer 💫

Previously published as A Sparkle of Salt