A GUARDIAN BOOK OF THE YEAR ‘Viscerally vivid . . . a sucker-punch of a novel, edged with knife-sharp black humour and shot through with moments of startling beauty . . . half Tarantino and half pitch-black northern realism’ Guardian ‘A 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 ‘A spiky, precisely focused novel with flavour, intensity, and oodles of character’ The 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’ Kirkus ‘A blistering debut . . . This dark and inspired tale pulses with life’ Publishers Weekly ‘Taught, intelligent and beautifully told’ M. J. Hyland ‘A startlingly original addition to the literature of northern England’ Ian McGuire ‘A powerful evocation of a landscape and a way of life’ Joseph Kanon With foot and mouth disease spreading across the hills of Cumbria, emptying the valleys of sheep and filling the skies