Book Description

Highland Widow: "The tale takes place on the banks of the River Awe in Argyllshire during the Seven Years War (1756-63). The heroine is Elspat MacTavish, the widow of MacTavish Mhor, one of the last of the Highland caterans ('marauders'), shot as a Jacobite after the battle of Culloden in 1745. She lives alone with her son, Hamish Bean MacTavish, hoping that he will grow up to revive his father's way of life. Hamish, however, realizes that in changed times the only honourable way he can imitate his father's courage and sense of adventure is by joining a government regiment destined for America. When Hamish visits his mother on a furlough, the incensed Elspat drugs him so that he sleeps beyond his leave of absence, hoping that he will escape with her and lead the life of a cateran rather than be branded a deserter. Instead he awaits his fate but is goaded by his mother into killing the officer sent to arrest her. Hamish is tried and executed; Elspat devotes the rest of her life to mourning and remorse before disappearing to die in solitude."--Http://www.walterscott.lib.ed.ac.uk.