The Borrowed Hills

Preston’s blistering tale of land and violence … is written in his distinctive Cumbrian voice, a vernacular stripped to its bones that encompasses stark prose and sudden startling flashes of poetry … The result is half Tarantino and half pitch-black northern realism that slides under the skin and lodges deep … A sucker-punch of a novel, edged with knife-sharp black humour and shot through with moments of startling beauty * Guardian *Preston’s ambitious debut novel has a noble but surprising aim at its heart: to take the traditions of the western and move them to the hills and valleys of Cumbria. It follows two farmers, Steve Elliman and William Herne, whose flocks have been devastated by foot-and-mouth disease. In an effort to save their livelihoods, they are drawn into a perilous criminal scheme that could either rescue or ruin them. Equal parts Cormac McCarthy and Ross Raisin, this is a lyrical and readable account of desperate men * Observer *A spiky debut novel … the language delivers a strange poetry [and] blunt wit … a precisely focused novel with flavour, intensity and oodles of character * The Times *A cowboy western in Cumbria, set during the foot-and-mouth crisis. Gritty and bloody, but also beautiful and moving, and an absolute page-turner. I loved it * Irish Times *Preston’s debut arrives like a punch to the gut … This is an elemental tale shaded in tones of heroism, machismo, moral intensity, and mythmaking. It’s also a love song to the landscape … Gritty, gripping, and fearlessly committed. A notable beginning * Kirkus *Beguiling and darkly humorous, this is a searing exploration of real events that took place in 2001 * The i *A blistering debut … Preston’s brilliant tonal range extends from epic heroism, as the men scramble after sheep on shale knee-deep in muck, to uncompromising realism … This dark and inspired tale pulses with life * Publishers Weekly *Utterly absorbing and original, Scott Preston writes with a poet’s heart and a cinematic eye. A painfully truthful account of the foot and mouth outbreak and the effects it had on the farming community, The Borrowed Hills shows the other, darker side to the Cumbrian Fells and to rural life up and down the country – Rebecca Smith, author of RURALThe Borrowed Hills shows us the Lake District from the inside, from the viewpoint of those who struggle to make a living from the land and who, when the bad times come, are driven to extremity and violence in order to survive. It’s a startlingly original addition to the literature of northern England – Ian McGuire, author of THE NORTH WATERScott Preston lifts the veil from the picture-postcard beauty of Britain’s Cumbrian fells to expose an atmosphere of festering despair in the lives of two farmers who lose everything when their sheep are destroyed by the government in order to contain an outbreak of Foot and Mouth disease. When they take desperate measures to rebuild their shattered world, what happens feels tragically inevitable. The Borrowed Hills is a story of anger and violence, devotion, love, and back-breaking hard work, told with dark, dead-pan humour and a rough kind of poetry – Carys Davies, author of THE MISSION HOUSEA remarkable debut. Taut, intelligent and beautifully told – M. J. Hyland, author of HOW THE LIGHT GETS INYou could read this remarkable novel just for its dazzling prose, but there’s more: razor sharp dialogue, meshed gear plotting, and above all a powerful evocation of a landscape and a way of life unknown to most of us, until now – Joseph Kanon, author of LEAVING BERLINAn astonishing debut - rarely has a fictionalised Cumbria seemed so vibrant and full of life. Preston weaves a visceral magic with every sentence that will have you completely glued from the get-go. Your new favourite for 2024, I promise! – Jonathan Whitelaw, author of The Bingo Hall Detectives, Lakeland Book of the YearA tremendously exciting novel … A brilliantly realized voice: Steve’s every utterance is the product of where he comes from … as blunt and brutal as the fells he works among * Times Literary Supplement *Scary and thought-provoking, this isn’t your usual ode to the countryside * Sun *A pitch-black western set amid the sheep farms of Cumbria … striking and powerful * Guardian, Book of the Year *This book is astonishing! I absolutely loved it. It’s so tough and brutal and raw, and yet somehow exhilarating, it’s bursting with life. The mad theft - a sheep heist! - is so eccentric and epic, it feels like a Coen brothers film … A brilliant, new, modern voice. The writing of The Borrowed Hills is so unique, so dark and so bleak, and yet it rises to breathtaking heights of poetry. – Russel T Davies

Scott Preston is from Windermere in the Lake District, where his father was a drystone waller and his grandparents were national park wardens. He studied philosophy at the University of Sheffield before working as a copywriter. He is a graduate of the University of Manchester’s creative writing program and received a PhD in prose fiction from King’s College London.