Search results for ""Author James Barke""

This huge novel, closer in scope to a Russian epic than to any English counterpart, opens at the turn of the twentieth-century in the extreme poverty of the Rhinns of Galloway, an agicultural backwater of the southern-most part of Scotland.With a loving regard for the land and its people, Barke traces the lives of David and Jean Ramsay who, full of hope, painstakingly uproot themselves and their family in the search for prosperity. Their efforts to retain respect and a decent way of life are thwarted by unemployment in increasingly hostile circumstances, and a harsh environment inevitably leaves its mark.But a generation emerges to question the authority of an uncaring society and, even as Fascism rages through Europe, a new hope is born.

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Although he died at the age of just 37, Robert Burns had an extraordinary life. Born into deprivation and hardship, young Robert's intelligence and passion were obvious from an early age. This is the second book in James Barke's quintet of novels about Robert Burns, following "The Wind that Shakes the Barley". "The Song in the Green Thorn Tree" tells of Burns as a young poet, struggling with poverty in rural Ayrshire, and finally being parted from his lover and children as he leaves the village on his way to meet men of letters in fashionable Edinburgh. James Barke's novels sympathetically and vividly portray the life of Scotland's National Bard.

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