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Dan Boothby had been drifting for more than twenty years, without the pontoons of family, friends or a steady occupation. He was looking for but never finding the perfect place to land. Finally, unexpectedly, an opportunity presented itself. After a lifelong obsession with Gavin Maxwell's Ring of Bright Water trilogy, Boothby was given the chance to move to Maxwell's former home, a tiny island on the western seaboard of the Highlands of Scotland.
Island of Dreams is about Boothby's time living there, and about the natural and human history that surrounded him; it's about the people he meets and the stories they tell, and about his engagement with this remote landscape, including the otters that inhabit it. Interspersed with Boothby's own story is a quest to better understand the mysterious Gavin Maxwell.
Dan Boothby was born in 1969. He has travelled extensively, including sailing over 40,000 sea miles. Island of Dreams is his first work of creative non-fiction.
"Evocative [...] A lively, often funny tribute to the place and to the people he meets there [...] Island of Dreams shows him emerging from the shadow of his hero to become a gifted writer himself"
– Daily Mail
"Enigmatic yet compelling [...] The book returned me to an adolescent passion for Maxwell's Ring of Bright Water"
– Guardian
"Island of Dreams, like its inspiration Raven Seek Thy Brother, becomes an elegy – not for a lost way of life, but for a dream tenaciously pursued and regretfully abandoned"
– Literary Review
