Christopher Rush

'Hellfire & Herring' gives a vivid account of the author's upbringing in the 1940s and 1950s in the little fishing village of St Monans. Rush returns decades later to rediscover his childhood, and offers a frank account of how it was for him.

When Rush's wife died, he plunged into a dark depression which drove him to buy a donkey and disappear into the mountains of Cévennes, in southern France, where he hoped to find a new reason to live.

When an ancient green whale is washed up on the beach near his house, six-year-old Peter helps rescue him by getting his grandfather's boat to pull him back into the water.

vii, 104 p. ; 23 cm