The Road to Dunbar

The Story

About the Book

Neil Pennington is fifty-three, lives alone in Swindon, and likes his life quiet, careful and predictable. Then his landlady tells him she's selling the house he has called home for almost ten years.

Around the same time, a stranger in a café hands back the phone Neil has left on the table. Scott Johnson is thirty-nine, chatty, funny and a long way from his roots in the Scottish seaside town of Dunbar. He keeps turning up, usually with his Jack Russell, Max, who has decided that Neil is his new favourite person.

When Neil needs somewhere to live, Scott offers him his spare room, just for now. Before long, the arrangement settles into an easy routine of dog walks, Sunday roasts and arguments about the heating. But when Scott starts seeing someone new, Neil is surprised by how much it bothers him. And Neil has a past he has never quite let go of.

Then an invitation arrives from Scott's mum: Christmas in Dunbar, four hundred miles north, in a small terraced house with a family who notice far more than they let on.

The Road to Dunbar is a warm, gently funny story about friendship, second chances and finding home where you least expect it. It's a contemporary gay love story of new beginnings, set against the backdrop of everyday life.