Here's the thing about Thomas Drummond - he can never die.

Finally home after years in the jails of 17th century France, Drummond - a disgraced Scots redcoat - is drawn into the biggest undertaking his country has ever seen: the colonisation of Panama.

But even as he travels across the ocean, he is haunted by the ghosts of his past. In their supposed Eden in Central America, the Scots struggle to establish a land of their own, finding only horror, starvation and something terrifying in the jungle around them. And Drummond, as he plunges deeper into darkness, remembers a strange prophecy told to him in childhood...

Using contemporary accounts and letters from the Darien Scheme that bankrupt Scotland, Auld Clem's debut considers whether even the worst of killers can be redeemed.