A refuge from the storms of life
Scotland is always there, waiting for a DES character to find tranquility and
support among the hills of the north.
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Mrs. Tim Christie
1932, 1934
Mrs. Tim, DES's popular regimental wife and diarist, gets to experience two
sides of Scotland. First,
when Tim is posted north of the Tweed, she finds life in the dreary industrial
town a whole different world, and not much to her liking.
But when her
neighbour, Mrs. Loudon, invites her and her daughter Betty to spend two weeks
at Avielochan, in the Highlands, she discovers the amazing charm and drama of
Scotland.
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Listening Valley
1944
When trouble comes, Tonia flees the London Blitz and interfering relatives and
returns to Scotland, not to her parents' home in Edinburgh, but the old house in
Ryddleton (Moffat) she inherited from her Nannie.
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Rochester's Wife
1940
Mardie's life in an English village is torn apart, so she takes the train
back to her home in Kilnocky, in the Lowlands of Scotland, where
Hoonie is waiting to look after her. She travels with her friend Dolly and
Dolly's nephew Jem, who see that Scotland is a whole different world.
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Bel Lamington
1960
Bel has spent all her life living and working in the south of England and
London. But when her ordered life falls apart, she accepts an invitation to
join
her friends the Armstrongs on a holiday in Drumburly, Scotland,
and finds new friends and a new job.
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Smouldering Fire
1935
Linda Medworth is reeling from the scandal of a highly publicised divorce, but
she finds escape when a kind-hearted stranger, Mrs. Hetherington-Smith, spirits
Linda and her son Richard away from the limelight to the isolated highlands of
Scotland.
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Young Mrs. Savage
1948
After years of enduring war and then widowhood in the south of England, Dinah
Savage has the glorious opportunity to return with her four children
(not
too many) to her childhood home in Seatown, on the east cost of Scotland,
lodging with her old Nanny. She and the children and her twin brother Dan have
a wonderful holiday and make plans for a new life together. Seatown is based
on North Berwick, where DES and her family and cousins spent many a wonderful
childhood holiday.
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The Blue Sapphire
1963
Julia is enjoying her new independence in London, with a congenial job, her
own flat and two new friends: Stephen, the mining engineer just home from
South Africa, and her landlady, May, who is as unusual as her house.
But a letter from her heretofore unknown uncle sends
her north to Scotland, and changes her life in unexpected ways.
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Spring Magic
1942
When Frances Field is bombed out of her aunt and uncle's house in Wintringham
Square, London, she takes the chance to escape her dreary, pointless life and
flee to Cairn, Scotland (because she saw a painting of it once at a gallery).
Here she makes new friends and finds purpose to her life.
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Charlotte Fairlie
1954
Charlotte Fairlie is headmistress of St. Elizabeth's School (which numbers a
variety of DES heroines among its alumnae). She's good at her job and likes
it, but she feels lonely, isolated by her position. Come summer, she accepts
an invitation to visit the home of one of her students, Tessa MacRhynne, on the
amazing island of Targ, off the west coast of Scotland. Now a whole new world
opens up to her.
Also published as
The Enchanted Isle
and
Blow the Wind Southerly
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Sarah Morris Remembers
1967
Sarah Morris, a daughter of the vicarage, lives in Fairfield, in England. She
has happy memories of visiting her grandparents in Scotland, along with her
mother Dorrie, who always took her annual holiday in Ryddleton. Sarah's
life takes her to France, and then to London during the Blitz. At the end of
the war, when she receives a devastating emotional blow, she returns to the
peace of Scotland.
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The Tall Stranger
1957
After Barbie France recovers from a long, mysterious illness, and a slight
unpleasantness over a broken engagement, she returns to her job as a decorator.
Her first assignment is to head to an old Scottish castle, where she makes
new friends and rediscovers a man she once met, who she never forgot.
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Anna and her Daughters
1958
When Anna is widowed, she finds her husband, supposedly a good businessman,
left his family with scarcely any money to live on. So she sells the London
house and returns with her three nearly grown daughters to the town of
Ryddleton, Scotland, to reclaim her roots and friends and family.
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