Starred review from January 15, 2024
A minister’s conscience is tested in the perceptive and beautiful latest from Davies (The Mission House). In 1847 Scotland, John Fergusen has recently broken from the Church of Scotland as part of a movement to form the Free Church, which aims to be independent from the influence of landowners. It’s also lacking in funds and unable to pay salaries to its leaders. John and his wife Mary are now impoverished, and he contracts with a landowner for £16 to perform an unsavory errand on a remote island. His task, which flies in the face of his purported principles, is to arm himself with a gun and evict the island’s sole remaining tenant, Ivar, so the land can be cleared for sheep. In alternating chapters from the points of view of Ivar, John, and Mary, Davies gradually unfurls the story of John’s calamitous arrival on the island, which involves a near-fatal fall from a cliff; his unexpected friendship with Ivar, who nurses him back to health; and Mary’s concern about John’s safety, which prompts her to board a steamer and come to his rescue. Davies cranks a great deal of tension into the economical plot—as the weeks pass, the reader wonders if John will finally tell Ivar why he’s there, whether the gun will ever go off, and how Mary’s impending arrival will affect the two men. Moreover, each page blooms with wondrous descriptions of the untamed highlands (“Now and then a long smudge of rain in the distance screened the sun, sending its illumination down onto a band of water along the horizon before it burst through again and lit up the pasture”). This is divine. Agent: Bill Clegg, Clegg Agency.
