Children of Disobedience

A disquieting love story is at the center of this compelling first novel set in the uncompromising society of the Hebrides. Boreray Island proves a refuge of sorts for feckless, 23-year-old Alan Cameron, who is effortlessly attractive to both men and women. In sharp contrast to the well-cushioned London existence he leaves behind is the crofters' hard-won existence. Welcomed into a large, struggling island family, Cameron becomes more than an observer of pastoral life. He works obsessively on rehabilitating his boat, follows vegetarian and pacifist principles in defiance of the sheepherding community and, with grave consequences, begins a sexual liaison with Donnie, an adolescent boy of surpassing beauty considered ``daft'' by the family. Trying to avert what eventually comes to pass, Cameron has a heated, angry affair with a tempestuous music teacher affianced to Donnie's cruel older brother. Though the finale leaves the reader much to ponder, the wild, untamed beauty of the locale and the crofters' fast-vanishing way of life are used to effect by Scottish writer Johnson, a gifted storyteller. (June)