The Flood by Ian Rankin 1st / 1st 1986

Edinburgh: Polygon, 1986. First edition. Author's first book. Condition is very good + wrinkling to top of dust wrapper spine. The odd minor mark to edges. Front board has a small shallow dent to corner edge. Wrapper has been price clipped. ink on back board, book is clean and in a very good + condition overall. 
 
Mary Miller is an outcast, believed by some to have occult powers, and is the mother of a bastard son, Sandy. Years later, Mary finds herself caught up in a faltering affair with a local schoolteacher while Sandy falls in love with a strange homeless girl. As the action moves towards a tense and unexpected climax, both mother and son are forced to come to terms with the past, in the growing knowledge that their small dramas are being played out against a much larger canvas, a drama glimpsed only in symbols and flickering images of decay and regrowth, of fire and water - of the flood.