'I got the impression that they could imagine only two reasons why a woman should choose to settle down in Bruach: either that she was running away from the police, or escaping from a lurid past.'

Neither reason applies to Lillian Beckwith, in these classic stories based on her convalescence on an isolated Hebridean island where 'even the sheeps on the hills is lonely'. On the island of Bruach she observes, muses at and joins the native crofters in their unique rhythm of life; where friends fistfight in the evening and discuss bruises the next morning; where the taxi driver is also the lorry driver, coal merchant and undertaker; where the locals don't remove their hats during a funeral so their heads won't get cold; and where the post office's 'opening hours' fit around the daily milking of cows and not the other way round.

In a series of vividly drawn sketches, taking in birth, death, marriage and the seasons of life, Lillian Beckwith's writing is shot through with warm, cosy affection and droll wit.