Shortlisted for the first ever Booker Prize 'A masterpiece' – Douglas Stuart, author of Shuggie Bain 'An extraordinary novel' – Michael Magee, author of Close to Home 'It deserves its modern classic status' – The Times It’s the west of Scotland in the 1950s. New houses are going up. Factories are opening. But Dunky Logan, a 15-year-old brought up in a tenement flat in working-class Kilcaddie, is ditching school to be a labourer on a local farm. Dead set on becoming a hard case, he wants to work shoulder to shoulder with so-called real men. Irish Catholic Mary O’Donnell arrives at the farmhouse as the new maid. She is pregnant - no boyfriend in sight. But she’s smart, and she has a plan to get herself up in the world. As Dunky is swallowed up by a vicious cycle of violence, betrayal, and booze, Mary becomes entangled in a savage family feud. Now there’s no going back, not for either of them. With an introduction by James Robertson.