Scotland 1959, Prue and January Cahill - British army children - are subject to outrageous family betrayal and violence. Prue survives by clinging to her school books, but most of all by developing an unlikely friendship with the rector's daughter, in her loving, middle class world. But January is the outcast in her family, its painful scapegoat and worse, its utter reject. This shattering novel exposes institutional violence and women's experience of brutal colonisation. "Arms and the girl" is a major, break through work.
