The Borrowed Hills
A Novel
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- Pre-Order
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- Expected Jun 4, 2024
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- $14.99
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- Pre-Order
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
A stunning debut novel set in the rugged, rural landscape of northwest England where two sheep farmers lose their flocks and decide to reverse their fortunes by stealing sheep from a rich farm in the south—for fans of Annie Proulx and Cormac McCarthy.
In early 2001, a lethal disease breaks out on the hill farms of northern England, emptying the valleys of sheep and filling the skies with smoke as they burn the carcasses. Two neighboring shepherds lose everything and set their sights on a wealthy farm in the south with its flock of prizewinning animals. So begins the dark tale of Steve Elliman and William Herne.
As their sheep rustling leads to more and more difficult decisions, the struggles of the land are never far away. Steve’s only distraction is his growing fascination with William’s enigmatic and independent wife, Helen. When their mountain home comes under the sway of a lawless outsider, Colin Tinley, it is left to Steve to save himself and Helen in a savage conflict that threatens the ancient ways of the Lakeland fells.
Told in the hardscrabble voice of a forgotten England, Scott Preston creates an uncompromising vision of farmers lost in brutal devotion to their flocks, the aching love affairs that men and women use to sustain themselves, and the painful consequences of a breathtaking heist gone bad. The Borrowed Hills is a thrilling adventure that reimagines the American Western for Britain’s moors and mountains where survival is in the blood.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Preston's blistering debut takes place in the farthest reaches of northern England, on "cloud-eaten" fells battered by wind and inhabited mostly by sheep. There's nothing much for narrator Steve Elliman to do when he returns to his elderly dad's farm after spending years away as a lorry driver up and down the coast, except tend the family flock and think ("I've stared at a mountain so long I thought I was one"). When it turns out the sheep must be slaughtered to slow the spread of an outbreak of foot and mouth disease, the bloodletting and carcass burning is brutal but quick, handled by teams of men in white suits. William Hearne, the Ellimans' hardhearted and taciturn neighbor who also lost his flock to the "squaddies," enlists Steve in enacting a kind of justice by stealing hundreds of prize sheep from a farm that caters to "offcomers," or tourists. Steve then begins working for William, tending to the stolen sheep on the vast hills of his neighbor's farm. He's a shepherd, after all, and shepherds need sheep to care for, but he's also drawn to William's wife, Helen, and he stays at the farm until trouble comes, ensnaring them and William's son, Danny, in a violent spiral. Preston's brilliant tonal range extends from epic heroism, as the men scramble after sheep on shale knee-deep in muck, to uncompromising realism ("Mucking out was a way of life and we were finding out what the end of that looked like"). This dark and inspired tale pulses with life.
