Year of Award

2024

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Type

Master of Fine Arts (MFA)

Degree Name

Creative Writing (Fiction)

Department or School/College

English

Committee Chair

Robin McLean

Committee Co-chair

Christopher Dombrowski

Commitee Members

Charles Oats Erin Saldin

Keywords

Isle of Lewis

Subject Categories

Creative Writing | Fiction

Abstract

Islands in the North is a coming of age Y.A. novel, set first on the Isle of Lewis in the Scottish Hebrides, then Vashon Island in Washington State. Dwyn is fourteen and three quarters, and she has attended Bridgely School in Manchester, England, since kindergarten. At Bridgely, she can truly be herself. A straight ‘A’ student, an accomplished pianist, a good friend. Dwyn is a stand-in mother for her five-year-old brother, James. Their absent father is a merchant marine who sails the seven seas and is little more than a pen pal for Dwyn. Her abusive mother dates a Scottish Islander, Duncan, who makes Dwyn’s life better for a time. Then he ends his relationship with her mother and goes back to his Hebridean Isle of Barra. Mother drowns her sorrows with two weeks of binge drinking, then she announces she will move them to a remote island, fifty-six miles out to sea from the North coast of Scotland, where the culture has not changed for a hundred years, and the primary language is Gaelic. Mother has secured a job as private secretary to a Madame Moncrieff, who lives in a mansion on the moor. Dwyn and James are to be out of the house daily from 9am to 3pm, in the middle of nowhere, and soon discover that the island has hidden dangers. Things go wrong, and Dwyn and her family must flee to America, where Dwyn and James are bullied and battered. Just months later, their mother leaves them, and sixteen-year- old Dwyn must keep her and James under the radar of social services, and find them a place to live, where no one will ask questions.

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