The Windhover

by Lorna Elcock

Perthshire 1957. The Camerons arrive from a tenement in Glasgow to run a remote Scottish youth hostel, unaware they are setting in motion a terrible chain of events that will reverberate through the decades.

Siblings Alison and Ewan delight in swapping grey city life for the mountains and lochs surrounding Rannoch. Only their elder sister Moira understands their granny’s dark looks and their mother’s increasingly poor health. As the summer progresses and Mr Cameron’s incendiary secrets begin to surface, the family’s attempts to create a new life unravel – and then the adults make an unthinkable decision, one that wrenches the Camerons apart.

It’s 1982. Ewan is long estranged from his family. Now a celebrated artist working in burgeoning London, he is a world away from Rannoch. So why do his paintings return to the rugged landscapes and soaring birds of his youth? Four hundred miles north of him, in grey and rainy Cumbernauld, Moira knows that it is down to her to remedy the effects of their disastrous childhood before it is too late.

The Windhover is an emotionally devastating story of lost children and misguided adults, tracing the shockwaves of lies and loss within one family and exploring whether redemption is truly possible when the betrayal runs so deep.