The life of a small, insular community in a rural parish, Caldwell, in Aberdeenshire is vividly brought to life in this short novel which recounts the fortunes of the Riddel family, in particular Hugh Riddel, the head dairyman at Darklands farm, and his daughter Helen, who has been away to University and seen life beyond the limited horizons of the village but still has to somehow find a place for herself within it. It’s an evocative portrait of a vanished world and it is obvious that the author was well-acquainted with the life she describes, but overall I found it the least successful of the three Jessie Kesson novels I have recently read. (The White Bird Passes and Another Time, Another Place are the other two and I very much enjoyed them) This one seems a bit too remorselessly bleak and the characters far less sympathetic, particularly the two main male protagonists. The narration is episodic, more a series of vignettes than a sustained narrative, and it’s sometimes difficult to pin down the time-frame. Nevertheless, the story is a moving one, and the fate of Helen Riddel inevitably arouses the reader’s sympathy.