Old Bastards
Stevie Duffy
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The Salt and the Flame – A Times Book of the Month
Author: Donald S Murray
£9.95
ScotlandSet in Highlands & IslandsLiterary Fiction
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A sweeping emigrant saga set in 1923: two young Hebrideans leave a traumatised post-war isle for Canada, hoping for a fresh start - but face poverty, prejudice and loss across the Atlantic. Perfect for readers who appreciate emotionally rich, historically grounded tales of migration and resilience.
Reward Points 9 Points = £0.90dispatched by Royal Mail Tracked 48
Booksellers Notes
Quietly powerful and steeped in longing, The Salt and the Flame captures the cost of leaving and the resilience it takes to endure. It burns softly but leaves salt on the tongue.
Our summary description
As Independent Scottish booksellers, we write all of our descriptions personally, we hope you enjoy this one.
On 21 April 1923, the SS Metagama leaves Stornoway harbour, carrying Finlay and Mairead away from the Isle of Lewis and the grief that has shaped their young lives. They are bound for Canada with hope, promises, and the belief that distance might soften what home has taken from them.
In The Salt and the Flame, emigration is not an escape but a reckoning. Across the Atlantic, industrial life offers work and possibility alongside prejudice, hardship, and the slow tightening grip of the Great Depression. The country they enter is restless, alive with change and backlash in equal measure, and it tests them in different ways. Though Finlay and Mairead share a past, the futures opening before them begin to pull apart.
Rooted in Scottish history and shaped by displacement, the novel lingers on longing and restraint, on the quiet ache of belonging split between places. It asks what it means to move forward without severing what came before, and whether love can survive when home becomes a memory rather than a shore.
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