Homecoming

Who am I? Where do I come from? For young John Chisholm, a small boy living with his mother, stepfather, sister and three half-siblings, the answer to these questions is bound up with discovering the father who died before he was born. As a young man, after an emotionally bruising scene with his cold, self-absorbed mother, his search takes him from Brownrigg, his home in the north of England, and from his sweetheart Catherine, to Glasgow and, later, to Wester Ross and Skye. In 1930s Scotland John finds failure and then modest success as a writer, as well as passionate political commitment and friendship in a place where, for the first time, he feels at home. But there are painful losses too, and even a jail term in the early months of the Second World War. He returns to Scotland after the war, having at last found his true literary vocation. But will his quest for his father and for personal fulfilment be successful too?