Book 2 – 2060 Hard Times

In Book 2 of the St Kilda Chronicles, ten years have passed since the new islanders first went to live on Hirta, the largest of the St Kilda group of islands and since their beautiful yacht was destroyed in a sudden summer storm, some years ago, they are now physically cut off from the rest of the world. In any case, what they were trying to escape from in the wider world actually happened and, as far as they know, is still happening. Only by the skin of their teeth had they escaped the disease and death that destroyed the world they used to know and they are now resigned to the fact that no one will ever come to their rescue. Also, because the batteries that were needed to power their electronic equipment have long been exhausted, they can no longer make radio contact with the outside world, even if they wanted to.

Nevertheless, the colony has been growing and thriving. Those teenagers who arrived on the island with their parents ten years earlier have become young men and women who want to start their own families while they are also beginning to take on other, wider responsibilities. Meanwhile, the Minister continues to go from strength to strength joining young couples together in the island’s church while he gradually assumes a position of ever greater importance to the isolated community. Lots of babies have been born and, by good luck, there have been no further deaths since that untimely death ten years earlier, but all that is about change. When one of the young people is assaulted and another is murdered all the evidence points to the obvious suspect but is he the killer?
Meanwhile, the unchanging demands on the islanders, if they are to survive living on their adopted home, continue. Fields must be prepared, seeds must be sown, sheep must have their wool taken, cows and goats must be milked and fed, and buildings must be repaired. As for the murder, with few clues to go on, those searching for a killer must still fit their investigations in and around their many other duties. Meanwhile, a hard core of the other islanders seem to prefer not to know what happened. The young investigators face an uphill struggle against many odds.