Hame

Hame is the Scots word for home, a place valued as a refuge and as a point of origin. The novel's narrator, Mhairi McPhail, leaves New York after her relationship collapses, taking her nine-year-old daughter, Agnes, to Fascaray, a remote island off Scotland. She has been hired to write a biography of Grigor McWatt, the island's late bard, a difficult man whose poetry earned him a reputation far beyond Scotland.

Much of McWatt's life is hard to pin down. His hard upbringing and his years as a wartime commando leave little trace, while hints of a secret love affair draw Mhairi in. As she tries to settle into island life and set aside her own troubled past, the search for the poet's story becomes personal.

As Mhairi digs deeper, she uncovers a hidden history that raises questions about who McWatt really was and what he meant to Fascaray and to Scotland as a whole.