The Scotswoman

Carolina Chronicles - Chronological Order #9

by Inglis Fletcher

This is a novel of the American Revolution and more particularly of its regional origins and first conflicts. It faithfully and dramatically restores one of the most romantic but least known episodes in our early history. For this is the American story of Flora MacDonald, whose Scots valor and feminine compassion once saved the fugitive Bonnie Prince Charlie. Though the famous thrills of that episode in the Hebrides are freshly illuminated here, the story centers in the North Carolina sequel -- an almost lost chapter of American history which is even more moving and more revealing of Flora's nobility and brave resolve. As always in an Inglis Fletcher novel, action, adventure and romance abound.

Genres: Historical Fiction, Fiction

544 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1954

About the author

Inglis Clark Fletcher was widely traveled, but the home of her maternal ancestors—coastal North Carolina—provided the stuff of her successful fiction and the home of her later years. The eldest of three children, Fletcher grew up in Edwardsville, Illinois, a small town populated by many displaced Southerners. As a child she preferred reading, debating, and writing novels to other pastimes, but it was her drawing talent that sent her to study as a teenager at the St. Louis School of Fine Arts at Washington University. Fletcher displayed some aptitude, but frankly said she was more interested in marriage than sculpture.

Her marriage to a mining engineer sent her directly to some of the roughest of the mining camps in California, Nevada, Colorado, and Alaska. Like many pioneer women isolated on male-dominated frontiers, Fletcher turned to writing as a way of coming to terms with experience. She sold film synopses and wrote poetry, articles, and reviews. When the Fletcher family moved to Oakland (1911) and San Francisco (1925-38), Fletcher found she enjoyed running a lecture bureau. In 1944 the Fletchers moved to historic Bandon Plantation, near Edenton, North Carolina. When Bandon burned in 1963, Fletcher retired to Charleston, South Carolina.

In 1928, Fletcher began her much-publicized tours of Africa, which she had wanted to see, she said, since she had been a child of twelve reading about Livingstone and Burton. From those tours came Fletcher's first novels: The White Leopard (1931) and Red Jasmine (1932). Both offer excellent observation of native craft, culture, and ritual.

The documents she found while researching her Tyrrel County ancestors and the Carolina campaigns of British General Cornwallis sparked her interest in the history of eastern North Carolina. Further research in Carolina libraries and extensive reading in public and private records of the period produced Raleigh's Eden (1940). The novel, the first of Fletcher's meticulously researched Carolina series of historical fiction, uncovered long-forgotten cultural facts of coastal Carolina settlement: Moorish architecture and Arabic residents, Oriental settlers and great estates. Many contemporary readers insisted that much of the novel's setting and events was imaginary, when in fact the novel was faithful to history. Each novel of Fletcher's Carolina series studies a specific era, beginning with the first attempted settlement in the 1580s.

The past provided Fletcher with plots, settings, and characters; it was also the inspiration for her themes. Through individual characters, Fletcher articulates her recurring theme: Land represents freedom and life, especially for Americans. Fletcher was intrigued by the possibility for altering identity that settling the colonies offered Europeans; she also studied the complex interaction of person and environment. The process of settlement provided a metaphor for individual experience: to attain knowledge of land is to attain knowledge of self.

This focus on the individual is circumscribed, however, by Fletcher's greater interest in—and skill in using as narrative—historical detail and fact. Thus, her works are most accurately titled historical romances; and melodramatic as some of her stories are, they attract readers decades after first publication, probably because they imaginatively recreate historical events—a form of fictional verisimilitude that comforts the average reader.

-Source: www.Novelguide.com

Reviews

[Anne Osterlund · Rating 3 out of 5]

Flora McDonald is renowned across Scotland for saving the life of Bonnie Prince Charlie and helping him escape England's forces when the prince fled Scotland. But Flora and her husband, Allan, have struggled to balance the financial challenges of being landowners while still supporting the people who work for them on their family's traditional lands . . . until ultimately the couple chooses the unimaginable.

To leave Scotland and start a new life in the colonies. To be specific, North Carolina. With Flora & Allan go the hopes and dreams of the people who travel with them. The twins, David and Dougald, are young men just setting out on life and adventure. A young Scottish lass with second sight has quickly captured Dougald's heart. An English woman, Cecily, has her own political role to play and heartaches to juggle. And James Blair is either a fop or a soldier disguising his true mission.

All of these souls board the ship to the colonies, hoping for a better life, a promising future, and peace. But it is now the 1770s, and the talk on everyone's lips is of war.


Very interesting. I picked up this book at a local book sale because I have a fondness for historical fiction set in Scotland, and I had learned about Flora McDonald while traveling in the Scottish Highlands one summer; but I had no knowledge about Flora's life after the famous episode of her assistance to the prince. And no idea she had emigrated to America or about the role she and her husband played during the Revolutionary War. While the story, itself, is highly fictionalized, I finished the read both more intrigued and more educated than when I began.

[Mike Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting portrayal of the beginnings of the Carolina portion of the American Revolution from the Tory perspective, but nowhere near the depth of Outlander. It was of course odd to come across some of the same settings in my head.

[Ryan Ricks · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an interesting book. The first third is a bit slow, but it gets more engaging as it goes along.

This book is also a bit difficult to read as an American and patriot. I wanted to like the characters, but it became more difficult based on their choice to align with King George. I can't help but feeling that they betrayed themselves by aligning with a King they previously fought against, and ultimately all of their fellow Americans as well. So it was somewhat satisfying to see their choices didn't work out so well for them.

As to the story itself, I agree with some of the other commenters that it was a bit long. The ending felt a bit rushed and unsatisfying. It leaves some loose ends, or at least doesn't tie everything up neatly. The author could have trimmed down much of the first third and much of the voyage, as the real meat of the story is in the last third.

[Gail Sacharski · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have begun digging through my own old collection for books I never got around to reading. This was one of them. It's the story of Flora MacDonald who helped save Bonnie Prince Charlie during the Scots Uprising of '45 (or the '45 as it's called). It is now the 1770s &, unhappy with the English aristocratic rule & unfair treatment in Scotland, the MacDonalds decide to emigrate to America to join other clansfolk to be free & have their own land & decisions about their life. Unfortunately, they arrive in North Carolina shortly after Boston has protested the tea tax by dumping the shipment into their harbor. As tensions & rebel disaffection rise, the Scots are afraid they've jumped from the frying pan into the fire. They try to maintain neutrality, feeling this isn't their fight, but soon discover everyone must take a side whether they want to or not. The characters were very likeable, they story was interesting, & it was not hard to understand how they felt in their position & why they did the things they did. I enjoyed it very much &, having some Scots blood, I loved all the traditions of the clans.

[Sherrill Watson · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the story of Flora MacDonald, (or Macdonald or McDonald), a well- respected, idealized person in this historical novel, seen partially through the eyes of Cecily Weston, an American. Flora comes from the tiny Isle of Skye, and settles in Cross Creek, North Carolina, for a short while. There is much about getting ready for the voyage and the voyage itself.
Skye: "Farewell, lively Skye, Lake, mountain and corrie,
Brown isle of the valiant, the brave and the free."
Her twins, Dougald(sic) and David swear a blood oath, only reversable by death, "Gainsay who dare!"

The Highlanders and their many clans came to the New World to escape the poverty of the Old, and landed in the middle of the American War of Independence. Wearing their tartans and their kilts, they were a proud and warlike people; however they became farmers for a time. Flora was a rallying person for the Highanders, who, together with her husband Hugh, supported us against Britain's rule.

Incidentally, she lived from 1722(?) to 1790, moved to Nova Scotia and ended up back on Skye.

[Salsadancer · Rating 4 out of 5]

A knowledge of 18th century Scotland history helps make sense of this book. Flora MacDonald and her kin lived there before they decided to come to America, not knowing of the Revolutionary War fervor that was going on. Many Scots were compelled to support the British Hanoverian King in this cause against rebellious American colonists. This was mortifying for Flora who had helped to rescue the Stuart "Pretender" king, Charles, and was now expected to support King George upon settling in America.

[Kari · Rating 2 out of 5]

Uh....the author did a good job of making me feel loyal to the Tories, but of course I wanted the Whigs to win, so I guess that's some great writing. (You can't stand to finish the book because you don't want anything to happen to either side) But it wasn't the most exciting book I've read, and pretty predictable.

[Eugenia · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Scotswoman is a book of historical fiction written in the 40s. The main character is the legendary Flora McDonald who helped Bonnie Price Charlie in the 1700s. I learned a little bit about this time in Scottish and Colonial American history but the writing style is dated and the plot lagged.

[Paige Pell · Rating 3 out of 5]

Found this among my grandmother's books. Interesting story of a Scottish family who migrated to the US during the time just before the civil war.

[John · Rating 2 out of 5]

Once again, a well written book but more for the young adult reader, not me. A bore, too wordy for no reason, lots of fill for no reason. I would have loved it 50 years ago.

[Carol Bakker · Rating 3 out of 5]

Historical fiction centering on Flora McDonald.