Here Burns My Candle: A Novel

A mother who cannot face her future. A daughter who cannot escape her past. Lady Elisabeth Kerr is a keeper of secrets. A Highlander by birth and a Lowlander by marriage, she turns to the auld ways , desperate to conceal a generations-old scandal that taints her family’s name. Her husband, Lord Donald, has secrets of his own, well hidden from the household, yet whispered among the town gossips. Elisabeth cannot - must not - discover the truth, or all will be ruined. His mother, the dowager Lady Marjory, hides gold beneath her floor and guilt inside her heart. Though her two abiding passions are maintaining her place in society and coddling her grown sons, Marjory’s many regrets, buried in Greyfriars Churchyard, continue to plague her. One by one the Kerr family secrets begin to surface, even as bonny Prince Charlie and his rebel army ride into Edinburgh in September 1745, intent on capturing the crown. A timeless story of love and betrayal, loss and redemption, flickering against the vivid backdrop of eighteenth-century Scotland, Here Burns My Candle illumines the dark side of human nature, even as hope, the brightest of tapers, lights the way home. A Reader’s Guide and Scottish Glossary are included.