Award - winning author Jeanne Williams has written a powerful and romantic story that brings to life an indomitable, independent heroine, Mairi MacLeod and the rich Scottish heritage she loves. This is the first of two books Jeanne Williams did about the Hebrides. The other book which follows this is "Daughter of the Storm" which we have reviewed.

For seventeen-year-old Main MacLeod, life on nineteenth-century Scotland's beautiful but harsh moors is one of constant struggle: not only against the elements, but against a greedy landlord eager to force tenant farmers off his land. It is a life of hunger and poverty, but also one of love and fellowship, demonstrated each evening as Mairi's clanna gathers around the hearthstone to hear the songs of their ancestors played on the harp that accompanied their emigration from Ireland long ago.

All this must change when the head of the clan, Mairi's beloved grandfather, is killed in a fire set by their landlord's cruel factor and the family is driven from the crofts they have inhabited for centuries. With no one else to guide them, it is up to Mairi to lead the MacLeod clan to a new home and a new livelihood. Assistance comes from the handsome seafarer Magnus Ericson who offers Mairi his strength and support, and a marriage proposal - and from the mysterious and brooding military captain Iain MacDonald-who offers Mairi passion but little hope for a life together. Ultimately, however, Mairi must rely on her own courage and hard work to build the satisfying future she has long sought for her clan and herself.

The author's insight to Hebridean life and history is astounding since she is best known as a American Western Writer. We want to share part of her introduction which will explain how she could write such a true life story of the islands, the clearances and the potato famine.

"I went to the Western Isles or Hebrides in search of Brighde, ancient goddess of fire who metamorphosed into Saint Brigid. I found her ancient hearths at Skara Brae and saw her follower, the red-billed oyster catcher, on rocky beaches from South Uist to the Orkneys. Magic as all the islands were, the one that touched me most was the Long Isle, Lewis and Harris. With a small group led by Sandy Mitchell of Strathpeffer, I walked moors and mountains, rested in flowery hollows out of the driving wind, smelled the peat smoke in an old black house of the kind Mairi and her folk lived in, gazed in wonder at the Callanish stones which looked like hooded ancients, sailed out to the Shiant Isles where we were greeted by seals and clouds of sea birds, and visited weavers, including the only one still carding her own wool and using native dyes.

On South Uist, we stayed at the farmhouse of Ewan and Kirsty MacDriskoll, which adjoins the fragrant machair that runs down to the sandy beach strewn with egg-shaped white stones which I thought were surely Brighde's. The MacDriskolls are crofters of a far more prosperous sort than their ancestors, but they still lift peats and burn them for fuel. On our last night, there was a grand ceilidh with neighbors and harvest workers in to dance and sing till dawning. It was at some small shop on Uist that I discovered the book that begot my own, John Prebble's powerful The Highland Clearances (Penguin, Middlesex, England, 1969). After that, I looked at the black-faced sheep with different eyes, and wondered what stories were hidden in the crumbling walls of abandoned black houses, so called because they were laid up without mortar.

Most of us know of the Irish potato famine but few realize the potato blight had just as cruel an effect in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland. Even fewer have heard of the brutal Clearances that scoured thousands of crofters from lands held by their families for centuries. Perhaps because these uprootings went on for a hundred years and were carried out at different times by different landlords, there's no accurate count of how many were forced to the slums of Glasgow and other Lowland cities or compelled to emigrate to Canada, the colonies that became the United States, and Australia. Three hundred here, two or three thousand there, these wretched folk were driven out of their homes to make room for sheep and for huge deer forests which could be very profitably leased. Certainly, many Islanders chose to seek new lives over the ocean, but hundreds of others had their roofs burned and their walls leveled.

Many islands remain unpopulated to this day. But Gaelic is still spoken and there are many island families that survived the evil days, fought for their ancient rights, and are proud of their heritage. Many times, I've written of emigrants to the American West, but this time, I longed to tell the story of those who stayed, who lived on seaweed and shellfish between the rocks and the sea, and who finally triumphed."

This is one of the books I have reviewed for this magazine I will cherish forever. The true heroine is Cridhe, a Celtic Harp, which becomes a dynamic symbol of the Hebridean desire to keep its heritage. The harp lives on and I will not soon forget.

Scottish Radiance is an Associate of Amazon.com Books and you can order this book from them by going to The Island Harp.