Lewis Grassic Gibbon 
Cloud Howe 

Introduced by Tom Crawford. The compelling saga of Chris Guthrie is continued in this, the middle volume of Grassic Gibbon s great trilogy A Scots Quair. The scene has moved to the small community of Segget, where, after Ewan s death in the First World War, Chris has come to live with her second husband, Robert Colquhoun, an idealistic and liberal minister. Cloud Howe offers a brilliant evocation of small town life set against post-war economic hardship and the General Strike of 1926. Chris loses her baby and has to fight for a sense of her own identity in a world where only the land and Chris herself seem to endure with honour. Robert Colquhoun, wracked by war-ruined lungs, has to wrestle with his ideals and a spiritual crisis which will eventually kill him. Grassic Gibbon was already living in England when he wrote his great work. The incomparable artistry of Cloud Howe makes his self-imposed exile all the more poignant.