The Salt And The Flame
Donald S. Murray
(Saraband, £9.99)
In 1923, on the Isle of Lewis, 16-year-old Mairead steps on to the SS Metagama. Ahead of her lies a new life in Canada, and still ringing in her ears is a sermon from her minister urging his congregation to heed the fate of Lot’s wife and never look back. Mairead, who until this day hasn’t been further afield than Stornoway, has taken that sermon to heart.
She will commit herself fully to her future, and refuses even to look over her shoulder at the bonfires her neighbours have lit to see the emigrants on their way.
Also aboard is fellow islander Finlay, the pair soon becoming aware of their mutual attraction. Upon disembarking, Mairead goes to Montreal to become nanny to a doctor’s three children while Finlay boards a train that will take him to work on a farm in Manitoba.
READ MORE: Glorious Exploits by Ferdia Lennon is weird but captivating
It will be some time before they meet again, but they will ultimately move south, settle in Detroit and start a family. They don’t like to talk about the suicide of George, the passenger who threw himself into the sea in a fit of regret at leaving his home forever.
Donald S. Murray, who grew up on Lewis, has written two fine novels already about island life, and concludes his trilogy with a well-researched and heartfelt exploration of the Scottish immigrant experience.
It follows Mairead’s fortunes over the next 50 years – through the Wall Street Crash, the Depression, the Second World War and the Civil Rights movement – as she adapts to her new home while watching the handsome, optimistic young man she married turn into a hot-tempered alcoholic racist.
Throughout her life, Mairead struggles to reconcile herself with her decision never to look back. Detroit is unfamiliar, sometimes frightening, a bustling Babel of voices that couldn’t be more different from the peaceful crofts of Lewis. But neither does she want to be like her friend Ina, continually sharing news about the folks back home and the passengers of the Metagama, her heart still in the Hebrides.
It’s ironic, then, that after decades of living in the US Finlay will accuse Mairead of not letting go of the old country when it’s he who has had the most trouble adjusting to the racial and cultural diversity around them.
While the more empathetic Mairead sees only outsiders like themselves struggling to make a life in hostile, impoverished circumstances, Finlay longs to be living once more in a monoculture, a whites-only club like Lewis.
READ MORE: Ava Anna Ada, by Ali Millar, is set in a terrifying near-future
Frequently, Murray looks back across the Atlantic to check on Mairead’s brother, Murdo, left looking after their ageing parents in a community where there is little change and little hope of improvement; a community where many are still emotionally scarred by World War One, the catastrophic sinking of the SS Iolaire that killed more than 200 men and the collapse of the fishing industry.
Mairead and her family may be fictional, but the Ness-born Murray’s research, drawn from relatives, acquaintances, museums and historical societies, draws one into her all-too-believable life.
Her lifelong uncertainty over whether she made the right decision makes The Salt and the Flame an especially poignant story, told with an abundance of humanity and compassion.
This well-crafted novel will strike a chord with anyone who has uprooted themselves to go to live and work in another culture, or whose parents have made that profound decision, showing keen insights into the ways people are shaped by the competing demands of the future they have chosen and the past that won’t let them go.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here