𝑺𝒕𝒊𝒓𝒓𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝑫𝒖𝒔𝒕
Extraordinary things unfold in Stirring the Dust.
A corpse left unburied for fear of infection; a paranormal great-great aunt; bigamous and incestuous marriages; a runaway wife and her gypsy lover. Dramatic episodes in the past are linked with the present.
A sense of something missing in events now has its echo in the rich cast of characters standing behind down the generations.
Mary McCabe should know the cast in this drama. They are the author's own family. Her mother's side (the Gardens) were artisans from Banffshire. Her father's lineage (the Morrows) came to the Central Belt of Scotland from Argyll at the time of Highland Clearances and worked in ironstone mining for three generations until the early twentieth century.
The book includes an invaluable family tree to help make sense of it all.
Stirring the Dust is a superb mix of historical research, memoir and narrative, convincing in its detail of the lives of the author’s and our own forebears.
Stirring The Dust was first published by Argyll Publishing in 2012 then republished by Ringwood Publishing in 2017
It received many glowing reviews including
“Almost impossible to categorise, Stirring the Dust is a blend of fiction, personal memoir and family history, and also a fascinating record of wider social change. Hugely ambitious in scope, it takes the reader from small town life in Northeast Scotland in the 1830s to Glasgow in the 1960s and many points in between. Yet the author negotiates this great arc of time and these shifts of location, and directs the multiple cast of characters with impressive skill.
McCabe’s detailed research is displayed with the lightest of touches, and it is through the actions and words of her characters that the great sweep of their story is revealed. And that story is told through some very fine writing - witty, economic and moving- in a number of registers. Stirring the Dust has all the fascination of real, lived history, and all the imagination and emotion of good fiction. It is a remarkable achievement and it feels like an important book” - James Robertson, author of And The Land Lay Still
“An epic saga of family, it’s history and Scotland’s, two seams richly mined by the three languages of its telling - an exciting linguistic first for Scottish writing” - Janet Paisley
“Scotland’s social history from the inside: a teeming cast vividly recounts the griefs and triumphs, courage, venality and sheer persistence of ordinary people in extraordinary times” - Margaret Elphinstone
“Rich dramatic thought-provoking prose is what the Scots language needs in the 21st century - and that is exactly what Mary McCabe delivers in Stirring the Dust.” - Matthew Fitt
