The Inn at the Edge of Light

Book excerpt: In the summer of '87, Chris Marshal travels to the Western Isles of Scotland and spends the night in a remote mountain hut. There, he's joined by an adventurous backpacker, Jen Munroe, who invites him to go with her on the trip of a lifetime, just the two of them, hiking along the old Hippy trail, all the way to India. But Chris is shy, and afraid of this bold, confident woman. He says no, then wakes the following morning to find her gone. It's then he realizes going with her was actually the one thing his life actually needed, that he's now doomed to spend the rest of it searching for the essence of what it was he lost that day. Through the cold-war of the eighties, the surveillance-capitalism and political disintegration of the early twenty-first century, and finally into the depths of a very British dystopia, Chris does his best to adapt, but is forever wishing he could turn back time, and strike out along a more authentic path. And of course, never far from his thoughts is Jen. She's never far from his dreams either, and in particular his strange recurring dreams of the Inn at the Edge of Light, a place where there's always a welcome, wise counsel, and a warm bed for the night. Here too might lie the answer to the enigma of his life, if he could only work out why it is the landlord keeps asking him if he's happy always with the same room,... Or if he'd like a change now and then.