Red Dust Road

From one of our best-loved poets and former Makar of Scotland, Red Dust Road is a heart-stopping story of parents and siblings, friends and strangers, belonging and beliefs, biology and destiny.

From the moment when, as a little girl, she realizes that her skin is a different colour from that of her beloved mum and dad, to the tracing and finding of her birth parents, her Highland mother and Nigerian father, Jackie Kay’s journey in Red Dust Road is one of unexpected twists, turns and deep emotions.

In a story remarkable for its warmth and candour, Kay discovers that inheritance is about much more than genes: that we are shaped by songs as much as by cells, and that what triumphs, ultimately, is love.
‘Like the best memoirs, this one is written with novelistic and poetic flair. Red Dust Road is […] fantastic, probing and heart-warming’ – Independent

'One of Scotland's most celebrated living writers'– Spectator