The Flood (novel)

Rankin wrote The Flood between 1983 and 1984 while working on a doctorate in Scottish literature. It was published in 1986 by Polygon, a small Scottish press, with a print run of only a few hundred copies.^[1] It was reissued in 2005 to praise in The Times,^[2] although Rankin has spoken of being "embarrassed" at its "purple prose".^[1] Knots and Crosses came out the year after it was published.

Mary Miller has always been an outcast. As a child, she fell into the hot burn – a torrent of warm chemical run-off from the local coal mine – and her hair turned white. Initially she was treated with sympathy, but that changed a few days later, when the young man who pushed her in died in an accident.

Now many years later, Mary is a single mother caught up in a faltering affair. Her son, Sandy, has fallen in love with a strange homeless girl. Both mother and son are forced to come to terms with a dark secret from Mary's past.