This novella is sequel to Bennibister. In that story, set in the Orkney Islands, a man searching for his emotional self finds it, only to have it plucked from him. A son remains as evidence of that passion and another woman enters his life. Can she match the love that went before ?

How would I describe the Orkney Islands? "A woman, lying part submerged, bathing in a shallow sea of turquoise; her smooth rounded hills rising from the ocean, bringing forth an archipelago of islands in the blue water." This would be true.

Yet this is the North of Britain, the real North where gales and rain lash the treeless landscape and the sea pounds the cliffs. This also would be true.

Against this backdrop people make their lives here much as anywhere, they live, they die, they love, they give birth. They reach for things beyond themselves."

The novellas are in sequence, Bennibister, The Wedding at Bennibister. The Third Norn (at Bennibister).