New Book - The Lost Lights of St Kilda by Elisabeth Gifford (Pages 1 - 55)

 

First Published: March 5, 2020

The book starts in 1940. Fred Lawson is in Tournay Prison after being apprehended by the Nazi. 

Then two more prisoners join him in his cell: Kenneth and Donal. Fred thinks fondly about the time when he and his friend Archie were on St Kilda as Archie's father was the laird. Fred thinks of a girl who he loved and still thinks of. He knows that St Kilda is deserted as the last inhabitants were evacuated in 1930.

In Morvern, Scotland, Rachel Anne lives with her mother, and she has always wanted to discover who her father is, but her mother has always kept quiet. Then she finds a tin in her mother's room and there is a photograph of two young men. When her mother finds her, she gets angry, and Rachel Anne says that she needs to know. So the mother, Chrissie, starts telling her how she grew up on St Kilda. First, she tells her of the time when she went after her father and brother who had gone to hunt, and she got lost. Chrissie spent the night outside, but she felt she was being looked after, and thanks to the birds, she was found. Then she also tells her about Archie MacLeod, the son of the laird, who came all arrogant and bossy, but he realised that he was doing wrong when Chrissie's younger brother almost fell from a cliff to obey Archie. Chrissie and Archie became friends. When he was sixteen, after the Great War, Archie became the heir when her elder brother died, and Archie felt he was not born for that.