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Description edit
The Massacre of Glencoe happened at 5am on 13th February 1692 when thirty-eight members of the Macdonald clan were killed by soldiers who had enjoyed the clan's hospitality for the previous ten days. Many more died from exposure in the mountains. Fifty miles to the south Corrag is condemned... read more
Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis edit
Characters/People edit
- Corrag: Young girl who witnessed the massacre and is accused of being a witch. Leslie meets with her in prison to find out about the massacre and her story unfolds.
- Charles Leslie: Irish priest who was banished from Ireland for his loyalty to King James. He is looking for proof that King William ordered the Massacre of Glencoe. He takes pity on Corrag while listening to her story, and this changes his outlook on life.
- Cora: Corrag's mother and a wild woman at heart.
- Alasdair: Second son of The MacIain, chief of the MacDonalds.
- Jane: Leslie's wife back in Ireland, and a world-wise woman.
- Sarah: Alasdair's wife
- Iain MacDonald: Oldest son of the MacIain, and wary of Corrag, though he gives her peace.
- Gormshuil: Old woman with second sight who lives in the mountains of Glencoe and is woefully addicted to henbane.
- Mr Fothers: resident of Thorneyburnbank, Corrag's childhood home, and a cruel man. It is his mare that is so key later in the story.
- Glenlyon: Chief of a rival clan
- MacPhail: Member of the MacDonald clan, with a cleft chin due to a scar.
- Doideag: Woman who lives with Gormshuil, and a pitiable character. Corrag feels sympathy for her and visits the old women.
Quotes edit
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“Was I mending myself? I think so. I was tying a knot in the old, past things—for so much was lying ahead of me. So much was to come.”
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“But maybe the best thing I learnt was this: that we cannot know a person’s soul and nature until we’ve sat beside them and talked.”
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“Folk seem to fill their lives with favours or a title or two--as if these are the things which matter, like happiness lies in a coin. Like the natural world and our place in it is worth far less than a stuffed purse, or a word like earl or duke. Perhaps, for them, it is.”
- Popular Highlights from Kindle Customers
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I think that maybe in our lives—in our scrabbling for food, in the washing of our bodies and warming of them, in our small daily battles—we can forget our souls.
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Sometimes we have so much to say, we cannot say it. Sometimes it is best we do not say goodbyes.
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We all have it. But I think it is people like us—lonesome, in love with the blustery world—who hear the heart most clearly. We hear its breath, feel its turns. We see what it half-sees.
Highlighted by 4 Kindle customers -
Your heart’s voice is your true voice. It is easy to ignore it, for sometimes it says what we’d rather it did not—and it is so hard to risk the things we have. But what life are we living, if we don’t live by our hearts? Not a true one. And the person living it is not the true you.
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truth—that there will always be the signs that a life was lived. Children, tales, words they said. Places they named. Marks they left in dust, or on bark. People they loved, and told so.
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Like light, it needs the other—the dark—to be called light at all.
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Lives mean far more than deaths ever do. It is what we remember—the life. Not how they died, but how warm and bright-eyed they were, and how they lived their lives.
Highlighted by 3 Kindle customers
Setting & Locations edit
Scotland and northern England
- Hexham
- Inverary
- Achtriochtan
- Inverrigan
- Thorneyburnbank: Corrag's childhood home
- Highlands: Hilly region of Scotland, home of the MacDonalds
- Edinburgh
- Achnacon
- Carnoch
- Dark Mount: Home of Gormshuil
- Lowlands
- Cat Peak
- Rannoch Moor
First Sentence edit
When they come for me, I will think of the end of the northern ridge, for that's where I was happiest- with the skies and wind, and the mountains being dark with moss, or dark with the shadow of a cloud moving across them.
Table of Contents edit
Letter
One: Chapters I-II
Two: Chapters I-IV
Three: Chapters I-X
Four: Chapters: I-II
Five: Letter, Chapter I
Afterword
Series & Lists edit
This book is in Woman and Home's Top 30 Books of 2010. (authoritative list)
Authors & Contributors edit
- Susan Fletcher (Author)
First Edition edit
Original Language: English
Publisher: Fourth Estate
Country: Great Britain
Publication Date: 2010
ISBN: 9780007321599
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Fourth Estate
Country: Great Britain
Publication Date: 2010
ISBN: 9780007321599
Page Count: 368
Classification edit
- Library of Congress: Add the Library of Congress Classification.
- Dewey: 823.92
Subjects edit
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