The Salt and the Flame

April 21, 1923. The SS Metagama is inching out of Stornoway harbor, Scotland. On board are Finlay and Mairead, young and hopeful, destined for Detroit.

On the other side of the Atlantic, the effects of the Great Depression are inescapable. Prejudice and division are rife, and though they remain bound by a shared past, their lives soon diverge.

In an adopted country that is tense with both opportunity and loss, can Mairead and Finlay keep their promises to one another to look only forward, and resist the constant pull of home?

From the author of the prize-winning As the Women Lay Dreaming comes a poignant and deeply evocative novel of the 20th-century emigrant experience in the New World. With lyrical prose and masterful storytelling, Murray paints a vivid portrait of the resilient Hebrideans-in-exile who struggled between holding on and letting go.

Donald S Murray is a writer and poet whose work has been awarded The Society of Authors’ Paul Torday Memorial Prize and The Callum Macdonald Memorial Award at Scotland’s National Book Awards. His acclaimed books bring to life the culture and nature of the Scottish Islands, and he appears regularly on BBC Radio 4 and BBC Radio Scotland.