The winning entry from the Two Rivers Press 1999 Short Fiction Competition plus five more beautifully written stories capturing Tom Bryan's darkly humorous vision of vitality and defiance in the Scottish Highlands.

from Famine Road (Potato Death Recipes)

Recipe One: A Recipe for Disaster
Edsel Blues - potatoes with skins of smooth marble, maincrop, going in this April day.
There are many voices planting today:

A Good day for it.
Aye.

Grand day for it.
Aye, aye.

Fine day for it, man.
Fuckin’ fine, aye.

Previous week, not much rain, soil now moist but not waterlogged. Sun squinting through the ash tree, always the last to leaf.

The ground is rough, full of tree roots, well-shaded. Bottles come up, rusted barbed wire, old pennies with corroded Royal faces tinged with green. Spade slices fat white grub worms. The rake peels back matted grass, dry like dead skin, exposing the clay-streaked soil underneath.

Soor ground.

Richt soor. Don’t expect much mind. Tardy ash, gale-blasted hemlock, striven butterfly bush. This all crossed and fertilised by deer, hedgehogs, badgers, errant sheep, foxes and pine martens. I build a cairn of fist-sized stones taken from the ground.