Raumsey

Fifteen-year-old Isa Muirison loves her life working for the floating shops of Orkney at the turn of the 20th century. But her happy family life is thrown into turmoil by her father’s decision to emigrate to Canada, her sister’s illness, and her own love for Davie, a penniless whisky runner. Despite her family’s opposition, she follows Davie to his tiny island home where she is met by the fierce hostility of his mother and his childhood sweetheart, Chrissie. Alone among strangers, Isa’s unrelenting determination gains acceptance and popularity in the close-knit community.

On the 14th of April, 1920, Chrissie Reid received a letter from a dead man. No one knew he was dead and buried in the byre, except herself. Since that fateful night 14 years ago, she had thought herself safe. Now, that security has been shattered. The past won’t stay buried forever and, with the arrival of a letter, Chrissie discovers that nothing is as it seems.

For Isa and Davie Reid, life has led them and their children away from their beloved Scotland to an equally difficult life in the weather-scarred, dusty, Canadian prairies of the early 1900s. Eking out an existence where the land will not produce, surviving when all else seems to challenge mere survival, Isa weathers the elements and shoulders the responsibilities, managing to maintain a homestead that her parents had started, but that left them almost destitute and destroyed their health, with very little help from the homesick Davie.

The Great War is over, and the inhabitants of Raumsey Island struggle to regain their livelihood. Seventeen-year-old Annie Reid is a spirited, ambitious girl, determined not to end up a herring gutter or go into service. Annie befriends a young schoolteacher, Alexander Garcia, who promises to help her further her education but, after tragedy strikes, Annie pursues a nursing career amidst the political complexity of Glasgow.

Hitler is marching across Europe. When the book begins, war is only a rumor. Mary Rosie enjoys the excitement the influx of young servicemen bring to the area, especially one charismatic RAF pilot, to the dismay of Johnny, the boy who expects to marry her. When the first bomb strikes her home town, Mary is catapulted into the grim realities of war. A grim discovery on the beach changes her life forever.