WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY ALI SMITHYoung Chris Guthrie lives a brutal life in the harsh landscape of northern Scotland torn between her passion for the land duty to her family & her love of books When her mother broken by repeated childbirths takes her own life & poisons her two youngest children Chris is left with her father to run the farm on her own Soon she is alone & for the first time can choose how to spend her life But as the First World War begins everything changes & the young men leave Scotland for battle The first in Gibbon's classic trilogy A Scot's Quair Sunset Song is infused with local vernacular & innovatively blends Scots & English in an intense description of Scottish life in the early twentieth century