Second Sight - Meg Henderson

The moving story of a woman sending her pilot son away to fight in the Second World War - from one of Scotland's bestselling, best-loved storytellers

Nancy MacLeod's great-great-grandfather brought his family over to Nova Scotia from Raasay in the 1840s, hoping for a better life. But Nancy, born at the beginning of a new century, has no patience with the old ways, declares herself to be a Canadian, and ignores the signs that she is the inheritor of the family's Second Sight.

Then WWII comes along and her eldest son, Calli, obsessed with flying, is determined to go to England to fulfil his dream. Flying a Lancaster Bomber for the RAF, Calli is shot down in 1943 and his body is never found. For more than fifty years Nancy is unable to accept his death, and then finally the missing plane is found. Surely she can put him to rest now. Except that there is still a feeling of life attached to Calli, a branch of the family tree still feels alive when it should be dead, and she doesn't understand why. And in Glasgow there is a young woman, Ruthie, who all her life has seen 'a man in the corner', a young pilot she doesn't know but feels strangely connected to.