First published in 1969 A Time to Keep has a vast cast of characters drawn from Orkney's past & present The stories offer a range of emotions & incidents exploring how the new & old collide & crash in a community as deeply rooted as Orkney's ' Celia' portrays a woman who is shutting out the contemporary world losing herself in an alcohol-fuelled haze which helps her rejects the horrors of Apartheid & the Vietnam War In ' The Wireless Set' an old couple begins to fear the implications of new technology as they associate the loss of their son during the war with the radio he brought to them before he left A Time to Keep reflects Brown's recent conversion five years earlier to Roman Catholicism which is both reflected in the title & in the spiritual content of the tales