An Island Apart

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.