Down In The Glen Something Stirs

The year is 2037 and the world is plagued by drought, war, vast migrations of people from the arid lands and resultant social and economic meltdown. Abundant supplies of fresh water are giving Scotland a precious advantage in a much-changed Europe. But the threat is that New Europe may absorb our water-rich nation and steal our hard-won freedom. Obituaries Editor Kal Gilroy finds himself in receipt of a strange gift from a recently deceased former girlfriend - the manuscript of a novel looking back to the Scottish independence referendum of 2014. He sets himself the task of unpicking this mysterious work. The supposedly fictional work left to Gilroy by Professor Jane hill tells a very different story of that 2014 referendum from that taught in university classes or recorded in the electronic journals of the period.

Down In The Glen Something Stirs, Jim Hewitson's first novel, is a fairy tale with a difference. This lively and thoughtful thriller suggests that as Scotland prepares for the 2014 independence referendum behind day-to-day life fascinating forces are at work. In deepest Stirlingshire something stirs in response to this potentially historic moment. This is an unfamiliar Scotland where nothing is as it seems. The old magic lies just beneath the surface.

Jim Hewitson currently resides in Orkney.