Book description
A haunting story of love and loss in the Hebrides . . . Island-born
Kirsty MacLennan marries Ruari MacDonald in order to escape city life
and a menial job in a guest house, and return to her beloved homeland.
As she rediscovers her roots, and adapts to married life on the idyllic
Westisle, there is only one thing standing in the way of her future
happiness - the brooding presence of her brother-in-law, who shares
Kirsty and Ruari's home.
Lilian Comber wrote fiction and non-fiction for
both adults and children under the pseudonym Lillian Beckwith. She is
best known for her series of comic novels based on her time living on
a croft in the Scottish Hebrides.
Beckwith was born in Ellesmere Port, Cheshire, in
1916, where her father ran a grocery shop. The shop provided the
background for her memoir About My Father's Business, a child's
eye view of a 1920s family. She moved to the Isle of Skye with her
husband in 1942, and began writing fiction after moving to the Isle of
Man with her family twenty years later. She also completed a cookery
book, Secrets from a Crofter's Kitchen (Arrow, 1976).
Since her death, Beckwith's novel A Shine of
Rainbows has been made into a film starring Aidan Quinn and Connie
Nielsen, which in 2009 won 'Best Feature' awards at the Heartland and
Chicago Children's Film Festivals.
