Conville & Walsh

With the Falklands conflict reaching its climax, Yan Thomas is tempted into desertion following a poker game of colossal proportions. Struggling to return home, Yan and his party of locals and fellow deserters embark on a remarkable chain of adventures across the Southern Ocean and beyond, which will push each further than he could possibly imagine. 

Three years after the conflict ends, and with no word from his missing father, sixteen year old Danny Thomas lives in a state of limbo in a run-down pub on the Tees estuary, his mother paralysed by valium, the menacing figure of a barman, Gary Hagan, an ever-increasing threat to his future. Prompted by a chance encounter with an old friend of Yan’s, Danny begins to feel the pull of the questions surrounding his father’s fate and sets out on his own journey of discovery.

HEMISPHERES is a startling debut novel, moving from the bright gas flares of the Teesside regeneration to the shrill hammering of the bird colonies of South Georgia.  Exploring chance, nature and our place within them, the hemispheres of the title refers not only to the globe but to the difficult spaces of the human mind.