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The Devil's Footprints

  • John Burnside

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Michael Gardiner has lived in Coldhaven all his life yet still feels like an outsider. Married but rather distant from his wife, he reads in the local paper that a school friend, Moira Birnie, has killed herself and her two sons by setting their car on fire; but she has spared her 14-year-old daughter Hazel. Michael uneasily recalls his past connections to Moira. As teenagers, Michael and Moira had a brief romance, yet more troubling to Michael is the fact that he was responsible for the death of Moira's brother, the town bully. In the wake of the tragedy, Michael becomes obsessed with Hazel, who is just old enough to be his daughter. Aware of his obsession, Hazel convinces Michael to take her away from the village and her father, an abusive and violent man.Setting his story against the untamed Scottish landscape, John Burnside has written a chilling novel that explores the elemental forces of everyday life: love, fear, grief, and the hope of redemption. In its ability to evoke and exploit our most primal fears, The Devil's Footprints prompts comparisons to the best of Stephen King. In both language and imagery, it is a novel of mysterious beauty, written with the clarity and power of a folktale.From the Hardcover edition.

Genres

  • Devil
  • Suicide victims in fiction
  • Fishing ports in fiction
  • Abused wives
  • Social isolation
  • Abused wives in fiction
  • Scotland in fiction
  • Fiction
  • Suicide victims
  • Fishing ports
  • Devil in fiction
  • Social isolation in fiction
  • Literature
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About the author

  • John Burnside

    born 1955

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    0 ratings · 45 works

Editions

  • Edition cover

    Nan A. Talese

    January 22, 2008

  • Edition cover

    1st ed. in the U.S. of America

    Nan A. Talese

    2007

  • Edition cover

    Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group

    2008

  • Edition cover

    Jonathan Cape

    2007