An old friar once remarked to me that, whilst he was glad to live in the midst of a community of young and high-spirited Dominicans, he often missed the companionship of a brother of his own generation with whom he could share his memories. At various stages in our lives we cast backward glances over our shoulders but there comes a time when we look to our beginnings, uncovering the summer in the seed. Father Anthony Ross’s book is an exercise not only in the uncovering of memory but in the sharing of memories, and in the sharing there is a healing too; the work is dedicated to his parents and step-mother in the belief that ‘love covers all offences.’ In this book he offers us a lyrical account of his boyhood in the north of Scotland, somewhat reminiscent of the work of Tomas O’Crohan’s The Islandman and Maurice O’Sullivan’s Twenty Years A ‘Growing, his subsequent university career, his entry into the Roman Catholic Church and admission to the Dominican Order. Father Anthony is a historian by training and it is his particular gift to disclose ‘the past quivering in what is’. His own life has coincided with major developments in the political and cultural life of the Scottish people with related implications for the Catholic Church in Scotland in general and the Dominican Order in particular. His book is part of his own story but is also a chapter in the history of his country and his Church.