It’s 1843, and along with hundreds of his fellow ministers, Reverend John Ferguson has broken away from the Church of Scotland to form a new denomination. His zeal is dented only by the worldly question of how he and his wife, Mary, are to survive without his stipend, which is why he agrees to sail to a tiny island halfway to Norway. Dispatched with scanty provisions and a pistol, he must inform its lone inhabitant, a crofter named Ivar, that he’s to be evicted as part of the Highland Clearances.
So begins Carys Davies’s third novel, Clear. But while the story is set in motion by two mighty upheavals in Scottish history, the book’s driving source of fascination – language itself – is revealed only once John reaches the island.
