No Trees on Hirta

About this book

August 1930. The last thirty-six people of St Kilda are leaving their island for ever, and sixteen-year-old Euan MacAskill, the best cliff-climber of his generation, must drown his father's dog in Village Bay before the ship will take them. Waiting on the mainland is a job planting spruce for the Forestry Commission in Morvern, a country of trees, roads, shops and money Euan has never seen, and a forester's daughter, Nan Cameron, who wants nothing more than to get out of it. Euan's father voted against leaving. His mother argued for it. His little sister has stopped speaking. And Nan's out-of-work brother has decided that the islanders have stolen his future. Twenty-seven years later, soldiers and airmen land on the empty island, and Euan goes back as their guide, carrying a door key he has never stopped carrying and a question about a cliff that he has never been able to put down.