Book description
Twelve-year-old Hugh MacBeth lives in a small fishing village near
Caithness at the end of the nineteenth century. He is becoming aware
of his mother's worries that he and his brother will follow their
father to sea, and is becoming to realise that the fishing industry is
doomed to decline, a decline that will result in the death of his
village. A lyrical and poignant novel Morning Tide describes how a
young boy learns to become a man. It is a poetic testimony to the
intensity of feeling in physical experience, the touch of the earth
and the coldness of the sea, and in the need to be free. Sensitivity
and wildness are pitted against the restrictions of family and social
life, and it is more than a complete picture of childhood; unfolding
into a set of values that speaks powerfully to the present.
Neil Gunn was born in Caithness in 1891 and, like Robert Burns,
worked as an excise officer. He was a founder member of the Scottish
National Party and became a full-time writer in 1937. He published 21
novels
