A Penance for Crows

Off the southern tip of the Beara Peninsula lies Beanna Dubh, an island of savage beauty, its jagged cliffs lashed by Atlantic winds and infested by thousands of crows. Untouched by twenty-first-century advances, the islanders live under the strict rule of the church, while clinging to old superstitions of the crows as harbingers of disaster. To this desolate, unforgiving place Grizela Urquhart fled, seeking sanctuary from brutal bullying in her native Glasgow.

Forty years on, Grizela still...