'Two small, confined communities in which established connections are cut across by shifting allegiances as people come and go: in cold climate as in hot, now as then, love is a complicated, compromising business' Times Literary Supplement shores of Penang. It is early in the 1930s and Dr Alexander Mackay is on his way to take up his post running a maternity hospital in the colony. During the voyage he meets two beautiful sisters and the seeds of a scandal are sown. hazy knew so little about. This near-death experience provokes a move to the wilds of Orkney, where Edward joins a project to harness the tides around the island as a renewable source of energy. But in the tight-knit island community passions also run high.