All We Hold Dear

In the spring of 1988, on a small Scottish island battered into stark beauty by the motion of the sea, Eva Crawford turns eighteen and learns a disturbing fact that shatters the comfort and stability of her life. Confused and bewildered, she leaves her safe childhood home and sets out on a journey of discovery – to unearth the truth about herself, her mother, and her family. In an austere Glasgow bedroom, Eva finds a worn, yellowed journal and a faded scrap of ribbon – the only clues to her lost heritage. As she opens the journal, she is spellbound by the story of her ancestors … women who, beginning with Ailsa Rose one hundred years earlier, had set out on their own remarkable journeys. Ailsa Rose Sinclair found contentment as a wife and mother in Victorian London, but it was the exotic paradise of Glen Affric that nourished and sustained her soul. There, her mother, Mairi Rose, awaited her … as did Ian Fraser, Ailsa’s first love, left behind years before. As progress threatened the healing beauty of the glen, Ailsa and Ian confronted their own demons, old loyalties, and new betrayals … and the passion they had so long denied. Alanna Sinclair, Ailsa’s beloved daughter, was raised in London but, like her mother, returned always to the rushing waters, to the peace and promise of the glen. There she met David Fraser and knew from the moment her eyes met his what it was to love with perfect abandon. Yet the strongest love could not protect any of them from the pain of a devastating tragedy…. One hundred years later, Eva Crawford pieces together fragments of herself from the stories of these women, and seeks to uncover more in the lush beauty of Glen Affric. Only if she cancomprehend the frailty and sorrow of Celia, the mother who abandoned her but whose memory will not give her peace, can Eva begin to forgive. Only then can she move toward a future that will give voice to the melodies and rhythms that sing in her soul. Then she may be free to love the clear-eyed, calm-souled man who wants to open her heart to the mysteries of nature … and to the greatest treasure her family can offer….