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When John McPhee returned to the island of his ancestors—Colonsay, twenty-five miles west of the Scottish mainland—a hundred and thirty-eight people were living there. About eighty of these, crofters and farmers, had familial histories of unbroken residence on the island for two or three hundred years; the rest, including the English laird who owned Colonsay, were “incomers.” Donald McNeill, the crofter of the title, was working out his existence in this last domain of the feudal system; the laird, the fourth Baron Strathcona, lived in Bath, appeared on Colonsay mainly in the summer, and accepted with nonchalance the fact that he was the least popular man on the island he owned. While comparing crofter and laird, McPhee gives readers a deep and rich portrait of the terrain, the history, the legends, and the people of this fragment of the Hebrides.
Tracing the legacies of the small farmers displaced and scattered in nineteenth-century Scotland, this is “a powerful, poetic, personal Highland Odyssey” (Times Literary Supplement). In the Clearances of the nineteenth century, crofts—once the mainstay of Highland life in Scotland—were swept away as the land was put over to sheep grazing. Many of the people of the Highlands and islands of Scotland were forced from their homes by landowners in the Clearances. Some fled to Nova Scotia and beyond. In this book, David Craig sets out to discover how many of their stories survive in the memories of their descendants. He travels through twenty-one islands in Scotland and Canada, many thousands of miles of moor and glen, and presents the words of men and women of both countries as they recount the suffering of their forebears. “[David] has the eye, the imagination and the descriptive density of early Bruce Chatwin.” —Toronto Globe & Mail
A moving and heartwarming World War I saga. For readers of Catherine Cookson and Dilly Court. 'When I'm the farmer,' began Mairi, and then she stopped, for she would never be the farmer. She was a girl. Ever since she was nine years old, Mairi McGloughlin has known she wants to be a farmer, but by the law of the land it's her scholarly brother Ian who will someday inherit. The next best thing might be to marry a farmer, and charming, confident Jack could be the perfect answer. But then there's Robin, her brother's best friend, more a man of books than of the land - and yet there's something about him. . . But with the outbreak of the Great War, their choices change completely and neither Mairi, Ian or Robin can hope to escape unscathed. As the world around them changes, only the land and love remain constant. But can it be enough to see them through? Previously published as Harvest of Courage.