Upstairs in the Tent

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Description

'Kate in her house. A whitewashed stone building with a view of the sea, on the west coast of the Highlands....' Kate is the mother of Mhairi, a distant, difficult young woman who has married without informing her, and returned home pregnant by a departed lover. After baby Patrick is born dramatically on the stairs, the bewildered Mhairi does a terrible thing - but the women are rescued by Kate's sound sense and a drifter from Aberdeen called Jamie. Meanwhile the visiting Californian Kate has secretly satirised in her newspaper column teaches this spiky, independent young widow something about her own need for affection. Offering a wry, freshly contemporary perspective on Highland life, UPSTAIRS IN THE TENT is a warm and forgiving novel about everyone's need to find their home in the world.

Reviews

A funny, credible and oddly moving story of lives renewed in the Highlands through a collision between Scotland, America, and an outcast. A real page-turner, witty and touching and true. I read it with delight - Andrew Greig

... her writing has a lovely spirit to it, an appealing mixture of the spiky and the warm... well worth reading - Michel Faber

Author Bio

Cynthia Rogerson, a Scot who was born and brought up in the U.S., now lives with her husband and four children in the Scottish Highlands. She was short-listed for the Macallan/Scotland on Sunday short story competition in 1998, and has been short-listed three times for the Neil Gunn Prize. She was awarded a bursary by the Scottish Arts Council to write UPSTAIRS IN THE TENT.