The boy stepped out into the road. He stretched his
arms out and his legs apart, making an X, palms facing
the windscreen, the hands with a slight tremor that Jack
only remembered later. His face had a questioning look
that asked 'Why are you doing this to me?' Jack has been
sleepwalking through his middle age. His wife has left
him; his grown-up daughters no longer need him; and he
rarely leaves his remote house on the east coast of
Scotland. But when he is involved in an horrific
accident, he is jolted out of his stupor, and embarks
upon a new friendship that helps him to re-evaluate
everything. Douglas is on the early morning Eurostar to
Paris to have lunch with a woman he barely knows.
Despite his responsibilities to family, work and
friends, he is determined to risk everything for his
obsession with a stranger. Angus is fifty-four. He has
always prided himself on his happy marriage, his
reliable car, his nice house, his stable career: there
are no nasty surprises. But when a man thirty years his
junior takes him to a stuffy room and tells him he no
longer has a job, he finds himself suddenly in freefall.
As a man without a profession, how does he now define
himself?As the three Henderson brothers head to their
big childhood home in East Fortune for their annual
summer gathering, they steel themselves against sibling
rivalry, parental expectation and the vulnerability that
comes with being with those who know you best. Intense,
humane, humorous and subtle, East Fortune is a moving
story about lives at the crossroads; about life and
love, chance and hope - and how families survive. |
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