Highland Harvest

A mother and son bound to a land of terrible beauty. A story that will make you smile and make you cry and perhaps make you wonder. Wonder at the joy of the dreadful power of nature at it's wildest, at the power of human resilience and the joy and the pain of a small boy growing up and at the strength and love of his young mother and their shared love of the land. Just three years after the Great War, in the remote Highlands of Scotland, during a terrible storm, Màiri McDonald gives birth to a son. Her croft, high on the moors, on the slopes of the golden mountain, supports her few sheep. The sour soil provides a scant living for her and her troubled husband Hamish. Callum, her newborn son contains all her hopes and the hopes of the tiny community of The Glen who have recently lost so many lives to the devastations of war. As Callum grows he begins to love this capricious land and its way of life as much as his mother does, despite its hardships and setbacks., despite heartbreak, tragedy and dangers. But he also begins to yearn for a life beyond The Glen. Màiri too begins to wonder if her beloved son will ever have a future beyond that of her own small and remote world. Can Màiri's and Callum's dreams ever be fulfilled in such tumultuous times and against so many obstacles.

The author grew up in the countryside and by the sea in the South of England. After A levels he worked on farms and at various manual jobs before moving to London to work in the City as a civil servant in the early Seventies. After becoming disabled in his early twenties and spending 3 to 4 years in hospitals and rehabilitation centres he studied psychology in London he trained and worked as a psychologist for nearly 30 years while based respectively in Leicester, North Kent and Sheffield and traveled extensively around the country for work purposes. He retired early in 2008 and is married to Carol, a retired schoolteacher and they live in Sheffield. He has had a deep and abiding interest in the Highlands and Islands of North-west Scotland since childhood and has stayed in the area on many occasions.