Relative Strangers

The McKay family gathers for a week-long holiday at a rambling old house to celebrate the fiftieth wedding anniversary of Robert and Mary. In recent years only funerals and sudden, severe illnesses have been able to draw them together and as they gather in the splendid rooms of Hunting Manor, their differences are soon uncomfortably apparent. For all their history, their traditions, the connective strands of DNA, they are relative strangers. There are truths unspoken, but the question is: how much truth can a family really stand? The family holiday mushrooms, drawing in sundry relatives both estranged and deranged. The machinations of an appalling, uninvited aunt threaten the holiday – and the family – with irreparable damage, but, surprisingly, out of the chaos, a hesitant unity, a new honesty, begins to emerge. Just as the older generations of the family begin to forge a fresh but infinitely fragile foundation, crisis amongst the youngsters erupts with tragic, bloody consequences. Visit the author's website www.allie-cresswell.com to download a copy of the McKay family tree.