FAR OTHER WORLDS
Unlooked for adventure and unexpected love, and one woman’s quest to be free.
The Western Coast of Scotia, 1135
Young widow Ailsa runs Caerwyn, her family’s estate, and dreams of leaving her past and her duties behind for just one summer, voyaging to the far ports of Ireland with her cousin Dugald. But Dugald claims the times are too dangerous and leaves her behind. When a message arrives from the new Scots king, announcing that she and her estate have been granted to an English knight, alone and frightened, a furious Ailsa vows she will regain her lands.
Ailsa’s struggle to avoid a forced marriage and keep her home leads to a challenging journey to the king’s castle at Carlisle and a new understanding of the turmoil and changes coming to the Western Coast and Isles. For the new king of Scotia favors English and Norman customs, and the old Gaelic laws, like the right of a woman to inherit or freely choose who she will marry, are falling away. In the endless delays at court Ailsa learns much about the frightening realities of power and the turmoil of clashing cultures coming. She meets the elegant and insistent Hugh, friendly Effie, fellow widow Alice, and overpowering Beatrice. And she encounters the landless knight Robert, who surprises her at each turn.
When the female storyteller Eachna comes to Carlisle, Ailsa finds a new passion and new daring. She learns about the courage that creativity demands and the complexity of the freedom she craves. Powerful and unscrupulous men need her and her estate; can Ailsa escape their grasp? Can she imagine a future that will save Caerwyn’s people and invent a way to live truly free?
Sources
For those who would like more information on this exciting era, here are some of the most interesting and useful of the many books I consulted as I wrote Far Other Worlds.
G.W.S. Barrow, The Anglo-Norman Era in Scottish History
G.W.S. Barrow, The Kingdom of the Scots: Government, Church and Society from the eleventh to the fourteenth century
G.W.S. Barrow, Kingship and Unity: Scotland 1000-1306
G.W.S. Barrow, Scotland and its Neighbors in the Middle Ages
E.J. Cowan and R. Andrew McDonald, Alba: Celtic Scotland in the Medieval Era
Edward J. Cowan and Lizanne Henderson, eds., A History of Everyday Life in Medieval Scotland, 1000-1600
R.R. Davies, The First English Empire: Power and Identities in the British Isles 1093-1343
Wendy Davies, From the Vikings to the Normans
W. Croft Dickenson, Scotland from the Earliest Times to 1603
A.A.M. Duncan, Scotland: The Making of a Kingdom
Geoffrey of Monmouth, The History of the Kings of Britain
Agnes Mure MacKenzie, The Foundations of Scotland
John Marsden, Somerled and the Emergence of Gaelic Scotland
R. Andrew McDonald, Outlaws of Medieval Scotland: Challenges to the Canmore Kings, 1058-1266
Mediaeval Chronicles of Scotland: The Chronicles of Melrose and Holyrood, Translated by Joseph Stephenson
The Middle Ages in the Highlands, Inverness Field Club
Cynthia J. Neville, Land, Law and People in Medieval Scotland
Richard Oram, Domination and Lordship: Scotland 1070-1230
John L. Roberts, Lost Kingdoms: Celtic Scotland and the Middle Ages
William F. Skene, Celtic Scotland: A History of Ancient Alban, Volumes I, II, and III
William F. Skene, The Highlanders of Scotland
Keith J. Stringer and Angus J.L. Winchester, eds., Northern England and Southern Scotland in the Central Middle Ages
