The Winter Sea by Susanna Kearsley

Carrie McClelland is an author who is hoping to write her next book set in the Scottish highlands. Whilst researching for the book and trying to confirm historical details and in the midst of meeting her agent a strange phenomenon happens. Carrie experiences not just a sense of deja vu but also feels that the physical building or rather remants of the building she sees is beginning to talk to her through the characters who inhabited this place three hundred years before. Carrie knows a compulsion to record the story of Sophia and John with the background of James Stewart trying to reclaim his crown.

That is the crux of the story. But to get to this point we have a whole lot of history, intricate and complicated, lives of ordinary people in extraordinary times, tales of courage and conviction and the tales of sacrifice are unbelievable. People being exiled, deprived of family and loved ones for the sake of king and country - exiled for decades all based on a dream and hopes of a King being returned to his country. That people would forego their entire life all for the sake of a single man who probably may not realize the sacrifice of his people is something that is difficult to fathom but very easily understood in this novel.

The love story of Sophia and John - the sadness that ends it all but the extremely rewarding and the magical ending which I loved is only something that Susanna Kearsley can imagine and conjure.

This was a wonderful book and one that I would recommend to anyone who enjoys a tale well told. Not just for lovers of historical fiction but for all.