Mary Miller had always been an outcast. As a young girl she had fallen into the hot burn - a torrent of warm chemical run-off from the local coal mine. Fished out white-haired and half-dead sympathy for her quickly faded when the young man who pushed her in died in a mining accident just two days later. From then on she was regarded with a mixture of suspicion and fascination by her God-fearing community. Now years later she is hardly less alone. She is the mother of a bastard son Sandy and caught up in a faltering affair with a local teacher. Sandy meanwhile has fallen in love with a strange homeless girl. The search for happiness isnt easy. Both mother and son must face a dark secret from their past in the growing knowledge that their small dramas are being played out against a much larger canvas glimpsed only in symbols and flickering images - of decay and regrowth of fire and water - of the flood. The Flood is both a coming-of-age novel and an amazing portrait of a time and place. Dark atmospheric and powerful it is a remarkable debut from a remarkable author.