A retired naval surgeon is travelling around Britain looking for a village to retire to when he is waylaid by a desperate mother with a severely injured son. The surgeon breaks his journey to treat the boy and supervise his recovery. The surgeon plans to move on, but becomes increasingly involved in the lives of the people in the poverty-stricken fishing village and is drawn to the heroine who is spending her small inheritance on feeding the starving villagers. These two are very, very good people, and together they manage to restore the town to prosperity. Kelly is not subtle! There is some interesting historical detail about the evictions of highland cattle farmers from their farms because rich landowners decided that they could make more profit from sheep than from cattle and drove the highlanders from the tenant farms where they they had lived for generations. Kelly makes excuses for a brutal wife wife-beater, a displaced highlander. No! ( )

A sweet Carla Kelly novel, taking place after the Napoleonic Wars. The characters were lovely and charming. It was very sweet but not too sweet. The setting felt very authentic and I learned a lot more about something I knew very little about -- the clearances of the Scottish Highlander glens. That was a tragic story. ( )