Redlegs

by Chris Dolan

Overview

Elspeth Baillie, a young Scottish actress, is chosen by enigmatic impresario Lord Coak for an acting career on the Island of Barbados. At first feted by the colonial gentry, her life in the Caribbean does not go according to plan. Elspeth is obliged to take on a temporary and ambiguous role in the closed world of Coak’s remote sugar plantation. Dolan’s plot is full of unexpected twists as Elspeth becomes ever more a prisoner of a venture whose founding principle is white supremacy. Captain Shaw, the factor, sets about building a New Caledonia that brings Elspeth and her compatriots nothing but a sense of timelessness and loss. A series of catastrophic events and rash historical mistakes finally breaks the cycle. Elspeth is left trying to make sense of her own life and youthful ambitions among a shipwrecked people dreaming of home. Linguistically rich and narratively hypnotic, Dolan’s novel asks what makes a Nation. Bloodlines? Language? History? Or some ideal for the future? Elspeth’s hopes for a new world, full of drama and passion, collides with the all too real drama and elusive loves of colonial life.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781908251091
Publisher:	Vagabond Voices
Publication date:	06/15/2012
Series:	Vagabonds , #10
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	256
File size:	367 KB

About the Author

Chris Dolan writes for page, stage and screen. Already winner of Macallan short story prize, Dolan was shortlisted for the Saltire First Book Award in 1995 for Poor Angels and Other Stories. His first novel, Ascension Day, won the McKitterick Prize in 1999. In 2012, Vagabond Voices published Redlegs, and in 2014 his first crime novel, Potter's Field.His non-fiction books include An Anarchist's Story. The Life of Ethel Macdonald, and John Lennon. The Original Beatle. Dolan has written extensively for radio and television, both drama and documentary, including An Anarchist's Story, and a history of poor whites in the Caribbean, Barbado'ed.