Veil of Time

In the wake of her divorce, Maggie leaves her native Glasgow to rent a holiday cottage at the foot of Dunadd Hill, an ancient Pictish fort where the kings of Scotland were once crowned. There she is hoping to find some time to herself to finish her post-graduate thesis on witch burning she had started before her marriage.

But there is too much in Maggie's past to allow for much peace and quiet: there's her epilepsy, for which surgery might be the only option, her only chance of becoming "normal." There are the seizures her daughter, Ellie, inherited and ultimately succumbed to. There's her son, Graeme, who went off to boarding school when tensions after Ellie's death became intolerable. And then there are the vivid dreams Maggie often has that make her draw only a fuzzy line between waking and sleeping.

Dunadd, with its own vibrant history, starts to cross that line and soon Maggie isn't sure if she is only dreaming about meeting the handsome Fergus, eighth century Celtic warrior and brother of the King. He certainly seems real when he reaches for herand the Druidess she is given over to seems much more alive than the witches Maggie is writing about in her thesis. Add in Fergus's young daughter, Illa, who is so like her own daughter, and Maggie doesn't know which world she would rather be living in. With the date of Maggie's surgery fast approaching, she must choose between life with her family-or with Fergus.