When a bridge collapses in the Highlands of Scotland, dozens of people vanish into the river below. A car hired by a woman tourist was filmed pulling onto the bridge moments before it fell. Now numbered among the missing, the woman seizes her chance to start her life over. But her new path takes her no farther than a wooden cabin on the riverbank, where she seeks rebirth and freedom from her old self. There she lives with Silva, an illegal immigrant whose husband and daughter have not been seen since the day of the bridge's collapse. The women are befriended by the boatman Ron, and together they create a fragile sanctuary. Lost souls all, they keep secrets from each other, yet connect in ways none of them expects, as they strive to reconcile their past histories with the present and shape for themselves an elusive, longed-for future.
'[Her work has] both evoked and matched in achievement - such masters as William Trevor.' - Barry Forshaw
'A tense and beautifully told tale.' - The Scots Magazine
'A thoughtful, multi-layered novel... it cannot fail to set the reader thinking about the plight of those who go missing each year, the basic human need to survive and adapt, and the metaphorical bridges that divide and connect us and what can be done to cross them.' - The Daily Mail
Author
About Morag Joss
Morag Joss began writing in 1996. She is the creator of the three Sara Selkirk novels, the first of which, Funeral Music, was shortlisted for a Dilys Award by the USA Mystery Booksellers Association. Her fourth novel, Half Broken Things, won the 2003 Silver Dagger Award and was adapted as a film for UK television in 2007. In 2008 she was a Heinrich Boll Writer in Residence on Achill Island, Ireland, where she worked on her sixth novel The Night Following, which was one of six finalists from over six hundred submissions for the Edgar Award for Best Novel 2009.
