There was a little boy who came from a family of Thugs.

In a remote town in the Scottish Highlands, a young boy with bright blue hair is growing up in a family to which he feels he doesn't belong. His father, like all the men of his family, is an angry man who never talks about his feelings and wants his son to be just like him. But Little Thug is a sensitive boy, especially since his mother went up the apple tree and never came back down.

One day, Little Thug has enough. Escaping to the forest for the first time, he encounters a rare Scottish Wildcat, and then a world beyond his imagination. But is it a world to which he might finally belong?

The Underloved is a powerful modern fable from one of Scotland's most acclaimed storytellers, written for the Quick Reads initiative from The Reading Agency.