Its plot revolves around a young boy called Kenn who grows up next to the Dunbeath river, then going on to experience the horrors of the First World War and his attempts to rediscover inner peace and satisfaction on his return to his village.

[1] It begins with a young Kenn poaching his first salmon from the Dunbeath river.

He encounters a sadistic beating from a schoolmaster, adventures in the trenches which result in his brother Angus suffering from shellshock and he meets Radzyn, an intellectual, scientific European who does not share Kenn's belief in the mystery of existence.

Gunn was influenced greatly by Jungian archetypes and the idea of a collective unconsciousness is prevalent in Highland River.

Like many early twentieth-century Scottish writers, Gunn believed in a lost 'Golden Age', when man was in touch with the natural and his environment, in contrast to a complex and disintegrating modern World.