The Crofter and the Laird

In 1969, John McPhee moved his family from New Jersey to live in the land of this forefathers, the island of Colonsay - seventeen square miles of dew and damp twenty-five miles off the coast of Scotland. They rented a crofthouse, his children enrolled at the local school, and they were soon accepted into this tightly circumscribed community of 138 people. Intertwining history and legend, McPhee gives us a comprehensive portrait of this remote and misty land. He battles the fierce gales of the Ardskenish Peninsula, listens to the crofters complain of the laird over drams in the island's sole pub, and meets perhaps the last of the Great Highland bagpipers.