In August 1956, a young shepherd, his wife, two-year-old daughter and ten-day-old son sat huddled in a small boat on Loch Monar in Ross-shire as a storm raged around them. They were bound for a tiny, remote cottage at the western end of the loch which was to be their home for the next four years. Isolation Shepherd is the moving story of those years. More than simply a sensitive and richly detailed account of the shepherd's life through the season, Iain Thomson's book also vividly captures the splendour of one of Scotland's most awesome landscapes, and depicts the numerous incidents that shaped the family's life there before the area was flooded as part of a huge hydro-electric project.