'I kissed my father once, when he was sleeping.' Nevis Gow is fifteen. For eleven years he has lived in a van with his father Marshall, travelling the country. They don t need people or school or jobs. All they need is each other. But Nevis doesn t just love his father, he s in love with him too. Until one day Marshall crashes the van and everything changes. Stranded on a remote Highland farm amid a family overshadowed by grief, Marshall tries to steer them back to normality while Nevis fights to keep things the way they were. Soon, though, he comes to realise that nothing about his lost life in the van was quite as it seemed. In Nevis s meticulously detailed record of events, lines blur between love and obsession, reality and wish-fulfilment, dreams and memory. Shocking, funny and poignant, this is the first novel by a young writer of remarkable talent.

Author Biography

Emily Mackie was born in Winchester in 1983 and grew up in the Highlands of Scotland where her novel, AND THIS IS TRUE, is set. She graduated from the MA Creative Writing at Bath Spa in 2007 and now lives in Bristol, where she is working on her second novel.