Straight Road

The story is set in June 1870, on a farm outside Glasgow. A road is being built which will demolish the farm and create an estate of suburban villas. Duncan Carr, an aging widower, is the tenant farmer, Agnes his housemaid and Tam the only remaining farm worker. In the last few weeks before the road reaches them the strains inherent in their isolated existence start to surface as Tam tries to gain some control over his future When this goes wrong, Agnes sees a way to save the situation, but only if she can steel herself to break the usual conventions controlling female behavior. Their story overlaps with that of the workers laying the road, where a potential relationship between Neil and Ashling – an Irish immigrant employed to break stones – comes to nothing when she chooses self-abnegation in response to the horrors of life in the slums of Glasgow. Along the way, the reader gets an insight into how life was lived at the time – the reality of which doesn’t always fit our clichéd images