Scotia

What makes a man belong to a place - blood, accent, memory, or the life he survives?

Owen MacIver is born into absence. His father dies when he is only two years old, leaving behind a Scottish surname, a grieving mother, and a silence that will shape the rest of his life. Raised on an English estate by Mairi, a fiercely proud Scottish widow, Owen grows up caught between two countries that both claim and reject him.

In England, he is the Scottish boy with the difficult name. In Scotland, he is the English-sounding outsider. Everywhere he goes, people try to define him before he can define himself.

From schoolyards and family gatherings to rugby pitches, martial arts halls, police stations, prisons, and the long shadow of institutional betrayal, Scotia follows one man's search for identity, dignity, and home. It is a story of class, masculinity, grief, humour, loyalty, and the stubborn refusal to be reduced to someone else's version of the truth.

At once intimate and sharply observed, Scotia is a powerful novel about the borders we inherit, the names we are given, and the lives we build in the space between who we are and who the world insists we should be.

For readers who enjoy emotionally honest, character-driven fiction rooted in family, place, resilience, and the complicated meaning of belonging.