Crossing The Line: When Adventure, Motherhood
and The Justice System Collide
!!VOTED IN THE TOP THREE BOOKS IN THE CATEGORIES OF PARENTING AND AMBITIOUS WOMEN BY GOODREAD READERS!!
I took my boys to Scotland for an adventure. I came home facing three criminal charges.
I wanted my sons to grow up curious about the world, confident enough to explore it and capable of thinking for themselves rather than simply doing what everyone else told them they should.
It was how I’d always parented them, and travelling together was part of that.
What I didn’t expect was for one family adventure through Scotland, and a decision that amounted to around fifteen minutes, to result in my arrest, three criminal charges and a fight that would consume the next year of our lives.
Suddenly, I wasn’t simply defending something I’d done. I was defending who I was as a mother, and the more I looked at the case against me, the less sense it made.
I’m a writer. I research. I question things. I compare evidence, notice inconsistencies and disappear down rabbit holes because somebody has said something that doesn’t quite add up. So when statements contradicted each other, timelines didn’t work and assumptions appeared to be treated as facts, I did what comes naturally to me: I started digging.
What I found raised questions far bigger than my own case about policing, parental rights, prejudice, institutional power and what happens when the person being investigated starts investigating the system investigating them.
But that isn’t really where this story ends: it’s where it begins.
Crossing The Line is about motherhood and adventure, but it’s also about power, freedom, justice, human rights and our willingness to believe an official narrative simply because the person telling it has a uniform, a title or a position of authority.
There are uncomfortable questions in this book. There is anger. There is fear. There are moments which, more than a decade later, still make me wonder what the bloody hell was going on.
There is also plenty of my cheeky humour, travel, love, family, Scotland in all its extraordinary beauty, and two boys who taught quite a few adults along the way that children are often far more capable than we give them credit for.
What you’ll explore in Crossing The Line
Motherhood and parental autonomy
Who decides what makes a good mother, and at what point does protecting children begin interfering with a parent’s right to raise capable, independent human beings?
Adventure, freedom and independent children
I’ve always believed children need to experience the world, not simply be protected from it. But how much freedom are we prepared to give them, and what happens when somebody else’s perception of risk becomes more powerful than our own knowledge of our children?
Policing, evidence and institutional power
What happens when statements contradict each other, timelines raise questions and assumptions begin finding their way into an official narrative?
Race, gender and social class
Would everyone have been treated the same way? It’s a question I couldn’t stop asking, particularly when I began comparing my experience with other parents whose choices had been reported very differently.
Human rights and the right to question authority
Having lived in Egypt during the 2011 Uprising, I’d already witnessed what happens when institutions become accustomed to citizens accepting their authority without question. I never imagined I’d find myself asking some of those same questions in Scotland.
The stories we’re told, and the ones we choose to believe
This is the rabbit hole beneath all the others. When the official version and the evidence don’t comfortably fit together, which one are we supposed to believe?
Where The Scotland Saga began:
I originally wrote Crossing The Line while I was still living through much of it. It became known amongst friends as The Scotland Saga. More than a decade and many books later, I’ve gone back to the original manuscript with the distance I didn’t have then.
I’ve answered the questions from my many readers, cut what needed cutting, questioned my own thinking, kept the parts that still matter and allowed myself to write the book I wasn’t experienced enough, or perhaps far enough away from the events, to write the first time.
In doing so, I realised something rather important. There were actually two books hiding inside one enormous manuscript.
Crossing The Line is now Book One of The Scotland Saga.
Book Two is Mothers Like You: How Far Will They Go To Break You?
Because after everything that happened, you might reasonably assume I would never go back to the West Coast of Scotland. But I did, because what could possibly go wrong?