The book that began Ian Rankin's phenomenal career Mary Miller had always been an outcast Burnt in a chemical mix as a young girl sympathy for her quickly faded when the young man who pushed her in died in a mining accident just two days later From then on she was regarded with a mixture of suspicion & fascination by her God-fearing community Now years later she is a single mother caught up in a faltering affair with a local teacher Her son Sandy has fallen in love with a strange homeless girl The search for happiness isn't easy Both mother & son must face a dark secret from their past in the growing knowledge that their small dramas are being played out against a much larger canvas glimpsed only in symbols & flickering images
- of decay & regrowth of fire & water
- of the flood