I knew in 1995, as soon as I heard about the Lewis Awakening—a mighty movement of the Holy Spirit in the outermost corner of the Hebrides Islands after World War II—I needed to tell that story. In 2001 I set about my on-site research—taking one of the first planes to leave Boise after 9/11.
I explored the Isle of Lewis:
great sweeps of peat bogs,
cave-riddled cliffs,
lost Viking treasures,
mystical standing stones.
I talked to people who were eyewitness to the events,
And visited churches where it all took place.
Ten years later I met an editor who thought the story would be just right for the new series she was launching. I wrote chapters and an outline. The publishing house axed the incipient series. I filed the project and went on to writing other series. But I never quite forgot about that story that needed to be told.
Finally, early this year, I knew the time had come. I dredged up my files from the depths of my computer, metaphorically blew the dust off, and set to work up-dating my research and my story. Now, what I had seen as a first in a new series would become book 7 in my Monastery Murders which offer readers contemporary crime stories with their roots deep in the past.
But A Wind in the Hebrides would be a Monastery Murder with a difference. Rather than harking back to Medieval saints, Felicity and Antony, my contemporary sleuths, would only be delving back into 1949. Further, this story lent itself to an entirely different format—one I had never worked with before. Each chapter would shift back and forth between two stories: Felicity, dealing with today’s problems—including her 5-year-old son as well as a lurking contemporary crime; and Aileana, my 1940’s Scottish heroine coping with an abrupt life change and the disappearance of her sister’s fiancé. This was a challenge that many days left me feeling as harassed as my heroines.
At last, though, truth, just and sanity prevailed in Felicity’s, Aileana’s, and my worlds and the story that waited thirty years to be told is due for delivery on my eighty-third birthday:
The Isle of Lewis, the northernmost island in the Outer Hebrides, a dot in the ocean, but the scene of a powerful event that changed lives in the years following World War II—including that of Aileana Maclean who is drawn back much against her will.
Today, Felicity Sherwood, a young American woman, is drawn to Aileana’s story. Two women, two generations apart, and yet their lives coincide in strange ways.
Anguish and ecstasy in the midst of a spiritual outpouring in the remotest corner of the Outer Hebrides.
Have you visited the Hebrides Islands? If so, please share your experience below.
