Tea in the Heather

The eight stories in this volume focus on the childhood of Begw Gruffydd. In the first, she is about four years old; in the last, she is nine. The narrative is set around the villages of Rhosgadfan and Rhostryfan, a few miles south of Caernarfon. It is a landscape of small-holdings, stone walls, small fields and mountainside. The men work in the slate-quarries of the nearby Nantlle valley. The women (as Elin Gruffydd here) struggle to maintain a household, bring up their children and tend their land and animals.