The Piper of Loos
A Novel of the 15th Highland Light Infantry

About this book:

In the soot-choked streets of 1914 Glasgow, tram driver Callum MacInnes measures his days in copper fares and the secret music of his father's pipes—until the white feather of patriotism sends him and his reckless best friend Jamie into the 15th Highland Light Infantry, the "Tramway Battalion." From the freezing moors of Yorkshire to the chalk downs of Artois, Callum trades his brass controller for a practice chanter, marching at the head of a raw citizen army that still thinks war is a brass-band holiday. But in the slag heaps of Loos, where the green shroud of chlorine gas rolls across No Man's Land and the pipes fall silent beneath the iron hail, Callum will learn the terrible price of the music that leads men over the top.

Steeped in the grit of industrial Glasgow and the visceral horror of the Western Front, *The Piper of Loos* follows a battalion of conductors, track-layers, and clerks as they are forged—and shattered—in the crucible of 1915. With a piper's ear for the rhythm of marching feet and a soldier's eye for the telling detail, this novel renders the Great War not as strategy but as lived experience: the weight of wet wool, the taste of bully beef, the letters home written by candlelight, and the roll call where more names are missing than present.

For readers of Sebastian Faulks and Pat Barker, here is a debut of rare authenticity and emotional power—a lament for a generation of Glasgow boys who played their way into history, and the piper who blew them forward, note by note, into the fire.