Catawba Publishing

Who was Hew Hendry and why, on this Scottish island after his death, is it important that I find out? Those questions sent me searching for clues to his past. I could not know that in looking for him, I would learn about myself, my choices, and my future.

Recently widowed, Harriet Hendry takes her husband’s ashes to Orkney but her unstated mission is to find out why the topic of his youth on the Scottish island was strictly off limits in their marriage. A good wife, mother, and helpmate in a business she never imagined running, now on this green and serene Scottish island that she deems “magic,” she begins to shed her “buttoned up” self. With the assistance of a teenage driver, she explores Orkney’s layered landscape and history and meets its people. Shards of memory intermingled with inexplicable experiences among Orkney’s monuments free her to face her life’s failures and choices. Whether investigating the background of a reticent husband or Neolithic villages, stone circles, and chambered tombs, whether seeking cultural or personal facts — she realizes that the past is interpretation through the eyes of the present and the individual. She cannot change her husband’s past, but she can journey beyond it.

Celia Miles, a native of western North Carolina, lives in Asheville. A retired English teacher, she co-authored a textbook for the two-year college market (Writing Technical Reports, adapted for the Canadian market as Some Assembly Required). Her novels include A Thyme for Love and its sequel, ThymeTable Mill; Mattie’s Girl: An Appalachian Childhood; and Sarranda. On a Slant and Islands One and All are short story collections. In 2008 and 2009, she co-edited anthologies: Christmas Presence from 45 western North Carolina women writers and Clothes Lines from 75 western North Carolina women writers. In addition to writing and editing, her interests are traveling, photography, old mills, and stone circles.