Da Happie Laand by Robert Alan Jamieson

Shortlisted for the 2010 Saltire Society Scottish Book of the Year Award and for the fiction category for the Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust Book Awards 2011; longlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award 2012

Hit wis kynda da promised land in mony wyes, da Happie Laand across da sea... In the summer of the year of the Millennium, a barefoot stranger comes to the door of the manse for help. But three days later he disappears without trace, leaving a bundle of papers behind. Da Happie Laand weaves the old minister's attempt to make sense of the mysteries left behind by his 'lost sheep' with an older story relating the fate of a Zetlandic community across the centuries - the tales of those people who emigrated to New Zetland in the South Pacific to build a new life in the promised land, and those who stayed behind.