Claire R. McDougall – författare

Some Secrets Only the Sea Can FathomIn the Scottish folktale of the Selkie, a seal woman climbs out of the sea by dark to strip off her outer layers and dance on the shore. Overcome by her beauty, a man hides her skin so she will be forced to stay on land with him. But the Selkie woman is gripped by a powerful longing, spending her days with her face turned towards the sea.In Song of the Selkie, each of the three McFarland sisters follows suit, journeying from her “captive” self  back to her wild more authentic nature. The youngest sister, Frances, has eschewed the life of the body in pursuit of status as a professor in an Ivy League college in America. On the brink of securing tenure, she goes back to Scotland where she is forced to confront a part of herself that has all this time been in a death slumber. By contrast, her sister Lala, the “sexy one,” moves from man to man, in an endless quest for the creative person she always thought she could be. And the oldest sister, Eddie, bides her time among the fishermen she serves in the local pub, drawn by some inexplicable force back to the small island of Roansay from which their dead mother hailed. When the three sisters converge in their childhood home on the pagan festival of Hogmanay, all manner of demons from the past are set to let loose.

In the wake of her divorce, Maggie leaves her native Glasgow to rent a cottage at Dunadd, an ancient hill fort where the early kings of Scotland were crowned. With only the hill and the view of the sea for company, Maggie is hoping to finish a thesis on medieval witch burnings she started long ago. But Maggie's past doesn't allow for much peace and quiet: there is the impending surgery to cure her epilepsy; the recent death of her young daughter, Ellie, from the same illness; and her teenage son Graeme at boarding school who is still reeling from his sister's death. Maggie slips into the eighth century during a seizure and finds herself back in Dunadd's heyday, but it seems more than just a dream. The druidess in her hut at the top of the fort seems more real than the witches Maggie is writing about in her thesis. Fergus, the handsome brother of the king, certainly seems more than an illusion when he reaches for her. And his daughter Illa could be Ellie's double returned to life over a millennium before her birth. As Maggie keeps returning to Fergus's world, her surgery approaches, and soon she'll be forced to make an impossible choice: return to her son in the present or make a new life with Fergus and Illa in the past.

With a one-way ticket to Scotland, the story begins...The entire rural town of Locharbert is abuzz because Hollywood director Steve McNaught is moving in. Putting two failed marriages, three sons, and a drinking problem behind him, he embarks on a quest for the uncomplicated life of his ancestors in the home of his distant relative, Mrs. McPhealy. But from the start, the newcomer is eyed with suspicion, not least by ex-hippy and local midwife, Georgie. Drawing on his well-honed charm, Steve tries to woo her, and though there is spark, she sends him packing ... until she doesn’t. Everything would be on track, if Steve could only lose his tendency to see the world through a camera lens, if only the funny local characters, like the tinkers on the shore or the randy postmistress, weren’t begging to be put on the screen. Georgie warns him against turning her town into a film set, but the die is already cast. He makes matters worse by buying up the dilapidated cottage by the shore where Georgie grew up and which she has always hoped to restore. Rejected and dejected, his drinking back in full swing, he packs up his film reels and returns to California. And then, months later, in the daft days of Hogmanay, Steve reappears, sober and brandishing his newly edited film. The secret life of Locharbert is about to tumble out.