Night Falls on Ardnamurchan: The Twilight of a Crofting Family

Since its first publication in 1984, Night Falls on Ardnamurchan has become a classic account of the life and death of a Highland community. The author weaves his own humorous and perceptive account of crofting with extracts from his father's journal—a terse, factual and down to earth vision of the day-to-day tasks of crofting life. It is an unusual and memorable story that also illuminates the shifting, often tortuous relationships between children and their parents. Alasdair MacLean reveals his own struggle to come to terms with his background and the isolated community he left so often and to which he returned again and again. In this isolated community is seen a microcosm of something central to Scottish identity—the need to escape against the tug of home.