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A Novel
by Scott Preston
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.
"Preston's debut arrives like a punch to the gut ... a Wild West–type tale of rustling and villainy, blood and belonging, transposed to the bleakly beautiful fells and sheep flocks of northern England... . This is an elemental tale shaded in tones of heroism, machismo, moral intensity, and mythmaking. It's also a love song to the landscape ... Gritty, gripping, and fearlessly committed." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"[A] blistering debut ... Preston's brilliant tonal range extends from epic heroism, as the men scramble after sheep on shale knee-deep in muck, to uncompromising realism... . This dark and inspired tale pulses with life." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Preston's debut is everything it sets out to be: picturesque but brutal and uncompromising ... this steely tale will have a lasting effect on the reader." —Booklist
"Viscerally vivid ... a sucker-punch of a novel, edged with knife-sharp black humour and shot through with moments of startling beauty ... half Tarantino and half pitch-black northern realism." —The Guardian (UK)
"A spiky debut ... precisely focused with flavour, intensity, and oodles of character." —The Times (UK)
"The Borrowed Hills shows us the Lake District from the inside, from the viewpoint of those who struggle to make a living from the land and who, when the bad times come, are driven to extremity and violence in order to survive. It's a startlingly original addition to the literature of northern England." —Ian McGuire, author of The North Water
"Scott Preston lifts the veil from the picture-postcard beauty of Britain's Cumbrian fells to expose an atmosphere of festering despair in the lives of two farmers who lose everything when their sheep are destroyed by the government in order to contain an outbreak of Foot and Mouth disease. When they take desperate measures to rebuild their shattered world, what happens feels tragically inevitable. The Borrowed Hills is a story of anger and violence, devotion, love, and back-breaking hard work, told with dark, dead-pan humour and a rough kind of poetry." —Carys Davies, author of West and Clear
"A remarkable debut. Taut, intelligent and beautifully told." —M. J. Hyland, Booker Prize–shortlisted author of Carry Me Down
This information about The Borrowed Hills was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Scott Preston is from Windermere in the Lake District. He is a graduate of the University of Manchester's writing program and received a PhD in creative writing from King's College London.
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