Family heritage and emigration come to the fore in a timeless novel of Scottish people at home and abroad. THE SEA STONE SISTERS is a lengthy saga with several changes of scenery, just right to enjoy over a few days.
A legend tells that the Four Sisters of Skara, a village in Scotland, were kidnapped by sea raiders. Four standing stones remember them. But in 1931, Charles Blackmore invited a curse by having the stones laid flat when he proudly built a new house. Slight paranormal touches run through the tale, with harm coming to the Blackmores and others of Skara.
Charles was a self-made man, but that didn’t last. His four daughters, starting with Iris, the eldest girl, emigrated. We follow Iris as she boards a ship for Ceylon, hoping to find a relative. She writes tenderly to Daisy, Lily and Rose, but intends to return. The posh company and the dissolute tea-planters are a total change from her life experience to date. All she brought was a bag of clothes and a ring.
Roz Chatton travels to Britain after a tragedy in her family in Australia. While waitressing in London, one day she sees a painting of four old standing stones in an antique shop window. Something about it intrigues her, and she speaks to the proprietor, an elderly man called Hugo Ballantyne. She doesn’t know if she has Scots ancestry, but she wears her mother’s heirloom opal ring, which seems to resonate with the painting. Hugo helps her find a firm of solicitors who are dealing with the Blackmore estate – what’s left of it, which is an abandoned house.
Through Iris’s story, moving from Ceylon to Australia, we view the 1930s, a time of recession and bad fortune all around. Plane travel was quite new, and drought killed off many hopes and dreams. Roz gives us the post- COVID travel era, in which danger comes through people and technology. The contrasts are vivid, and some of the tragedies can be upsetting. The reader just keeps hoping the sisters will find love and happiness. I feel that we get too many first- person points of view, as one of the lawyers shows us around for a time, and while he may feature in another story of this nascent series, it seems to stretch the first book.
Eleanor Buchanan tells us she drew on her personal family history and letters to write this book. THE SEA STONE SISTERS is an enchanting timeslip tale, which suggests that the four rings worn by the Blackmore girls may be reunited by the end of the series.
It all begins with The Sea Stone Sisters. In this spellbinding series Eleanor Buchanan intricately weaves together the stories of four sisters and their descendants scattered across the globe from the Scottish home that they all yearn to return to.Four great stones once stood on a remote Scottish headland - the Sisters of Skara.Legend has it they were raised by a grieving father, to guide his abducted daughters home.A curse was placed on anyone who laid the stones low:their family, too, would be scattered to the winds, never to find their way home.Let yourself be whisked away from Scotland to Ceylon and from Australia to London in this epic tale about family mysteries, unexpected love and enduring courage.1931. When businessman Charles Blackmore takes down the stones on the Scottish headland, he soon finds his fortune lost, his wife dead and his four daughters torn apart. They each cling to a ring they inherited from their mother, alongside the hope of one day reuniting.Iris, the eldest daughter, is the first to leave, making for Ceylon in search of a long-lost uncle who might help keep the family together. Promising to return as soon as she can, her journey takes her from the exotic beauty of Ceylon to the vast Australian outback, but will it ever take her home?Present day. Roz moves to London from Australia with one singular personal item - an old ring that used to belong to her mother. Feeling adrift, everything changes when she discovers a painting of old standing stones which ignites an uncanny connection to the ring on her finger. Hunting down the history of this painting, Roz starts to piece together the story of Iris's journey, unravelling her own family history in the process. She soon learns that the past has a power that cannot be easily escaped.The Sea Stone Sisters is the first of a sweeping and moving series, perfect for fans of Soraya Lane, Lucinda Riley and Clare Flynn.
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