Books by John Mackay

The bond between a mother and her child is the strongest in the natural world. So why would a young woman, dreaming of America, throw her newborn baby into the waves of the wild Atlantic ocean? Life in the Scottish Hebrides can be harsh - 'The Edge of the World' some call it. For Kirsty MacLeod, the love of Murdo promises a new life away from the scrape of the land and the repression of the church. But the Great War looms and the villages hold a grand Road Dance to send their young men off to battle. As the dancers swirl and sup, Kirsty is overpowered and raped by an unknown assailant. She hides her dark secret, fearful of what it will mean for her and the baby she is carrying. Only the embittered doctor, a man with a cold wife and a colder bed, suspects. On a fateful day of surging seas and swelling pain Kirsty learns that her love will never be back. Now she must make her choice and it is no choice at all. And the hunt for the baby's mother and his killer become one and the same.

The most extensive study of the life and corpus of any Russian or Soviet filmmaker, this book reinserts Dziga Vertov's films into the complex epoch in which he worked, the theoretical debates in which he participated, and the reception his writings and films have generated.