Jim Hewitson 
Down in the Glen Something Stirs : A Novel of the Scottish Independence Referendum 
A Novel of the Scottish Independence Referendum

We’re told that most folk in Britain no longer believe in fairies. Yet two centuries ago North of the Border the ‘guid neebors’ were accepted as a potent force in everyday life, as real as the sunrise and sunset.

Scotland is today on the verge of a watershed moment in her history with an independence referendum scheduled for the autumn of 2014. But in the midst of this fresh excitement are much older, occult forces at work?

This timely novel opens in the year 2037 in a world plagued by drought, war, vast migrations of people from the arid lands and resultant social and economic meltdown. However, abundant supplies of fresh water are giving Scotland a precious advantage in a much-changed Europe. But the threat is that New Europe may soak up our water-rich nation and steal Scotland’s liberty.

Obituaries Editor Kal Gilroy finds himself in receipt of a strange gift from a recently deceased former girlfriend – the manuscript of a novel looking back to the Scottish independence referendum of 2014. He sets himself the task of unpicking this mysterious work and the book’s relevance to Scotland in the 2030s soon becomes apparent.

The supposedly ‘fictional’ work left to Gilroy by Professor Jane Hill tells a very different story of that 2014 referendum from that taught in university classes or recorded in the electronic journals of the period.

This is Jim Hewitson’s first novel and it is a romantic fairy tale with a difference. A lively fantasy it suggests that, as Scotland prepares for next year’s vote, fascinating forces are at work behind the scenes. In deepest Stirlingshire something occult stirs in response to this potentially historic moment; This is an unfamiliar Scotland where nothing is quite as it seems. The old magic lies just beneath the surface.