Douglas Stewart

And everyone else is aging and sort of getting by.

But his father is the presenter in the local church.

He is the deacon there.

The church is the center of the small community.

And his father, John, is also a sheep farmer.

He is a weaver.

He is a sometime electrician.

He will do anything he can to sort of to help the family survive.

But the real issue is, is that John has been living not with his mother, but with his mother-in-law, Ella.

And Ella is a Glaswegian transplant.

Although she's been on the islands for 50 years, she is still referred to in quiet tones as the newly arrived.

And and so it's been quite a tense thing for a man to be living with his mother in law.

And so Cal has come home to this family.

And, you know, in every sort of triangle, there is a push and pull and a sense of drama there.

They do.

One of the things that I had loved most when I was talking about the sort of the anorthosite is I was told by my friends that live there locally that some of the only places that can be claimed to be found is on the east coast of Harris and then also on the surface of the moon.

And they have a very famous hill there that was once mined for semi-precious stones for red garnets.

And in the novel, I write that the earth and the moon were once joined as lovers.

And when they shared their final kiss and the moon ascended to the heavens, she cried and the red garnets are her tears falling back to earth.

And as a novelist, I love the romance of that.