The first novel, I am a Stranger in a Strange Land is set between 1956 and 1964, in which the protagonist Tio Mourillon migrates from Dominica in the Caribbean to England to work in Scunthorpe in its booming steel industry, during which time he meets Judith. They marry, and fight to buy a home in a Lincolnshire village within which Judith grew up.
In the second novel, A Song in a Strange Land, we move forward to the years between 1973 and 1979, in which Tio and Judith's sons, Andre and Lennox attend their local newly built comprehensive school. Lennox encounters hostility, intitially overt, later increasingly covert, and is convinced all is not well with his elder brother also.
Both seek to get by. Each chooses a different means of doing so. Andre seeks to assimilate, to take on the culture and identity of the environment in which he dwells. Lennox seeks to integrate, to maintain his own identity. Both struggle. Both implode.
This story poses the question, how do you sing the Lord's song in a strange land? How do you survive, even flourish in an environment within which you may feel alienated and estranged?
It's a different era from the one in which the father Tio had to fight to establish his place within the northern industrial community, having lived there almost two decades. Things should be easier now, shouldn't they? The family is known in the small village within which they reside, not so much so in the larger a mere mile away where local family bonds do little to mitigate a torrent of hostility, overt and covert, spilling over into frequent violence. It is against this backdrop that the brothers must find their way in life, as must the nearby town of Scunthorpe.
The very basis upon which the town first flourished is now threatened. Whilst Lennox is engulfed in his own crisis, the steelworks is experiencing one of its own. Once regarded as part of the beating industrial heart of the nation, its very bone structure, a change of government and of the national mood places the town as dimly viewed anachronism. It too must find its way forward.
The book tells the story of two brothers, their family and their broader community as they try to find a way to sing their own song in a strange land.
