From the author of the acclaimed novels The House Between Tides and Beyond the Wild River, a rich, atmospheric tale set on the sea-lashed coast of west Scotland, in which the lives of a ninth-century Norsewoman, a nineteenth-century woman, and a twenty-first-century archaeologist weave together after a body is discovered in the dunes.
Libby Snow has always felt the pull of Ullaness-a lush Scottish island enshrouded in myth and deeply important to her family. Her great-great-grandmother Ellen was obsessed with the strange legend of Ulla, a Viking maiden who washed up on shore with the nearly lifeless body of her husband-and who inspired countless epic poems and the island's name.
Central to the mystery is an ornate chalice and Libby, an archaeologist, finally has permission to excavate the site where Ulla is believed to have lived. But what Libby finds in the ancient dunes is a body from the Victorian era, clearly murdered . . . and potentially connected to Ellen.
What unfolds is an epic story that spans centuries, with Libby mining Ellen and Ulla's stories for clues about the body, and in doing so, discovering the darker threads that bind all three women together across history.
Nineteen-year-old Evelyn has rarely strayed from her family's isolated estate-save for the occasional trip to Edinburgh, where her father, a respected magistrate, conducts his business. But when Evelyn's innocent friendship with a servant is misinterpreted by her father as an illicit union, Evelyn is whisked away to accompany her father on a trip to North America. For the final portion of that trip, Evelyn and her father go fishing in Canada, and Evelyn is surprised to discover that their guide is James Douglas, a former stablehand who disappeared from their estate five years ago on the night of a double murder. Now, far from the constraints of polite society, the truth about that day, James, and her father are revealed.
Following the deaths of her last living relatives, Hetty Deveraux returns to her ancestral home, a crumbling estate in Scotland's Outer Hebrides, with the intention of renovating and reselling it as a hotel. As she dives headfirst into the repairs, she discovers human remains beneath a rotting floorboard in the basement. Hungry for answers, Hetty sets out to unravel the estate's secret-and those of its former inhabitants, including Beatrice Blake, a woman who moved there a century ago with her husband Theo, a famous painter. Following whispered rumors and a handful of leads, Hetty soon discovers that no one knows exactly what happened to Beatrice, only that her actions have reverberated throughout history, affecting Hetty's present in startling ways.
