IN the course of just one fateful year, the life of young
dreamer Flora MacQueen on the remote Island of St Kilda will change far beyond
the destiny she had always thought was mapped out for her from birth.
With her lustrous black hair, ‘appled cheeks’ and flashing
green eyes, feisty Flora is noted for her captivating beauty, and the arrival
of two wealthy young men on a visiting yacht is set to bring the awakening of
an unexpected love... and a heartbreaking tragedy.
After the runaway success of smash-hit reads, The Last Summer and The Stolen Hour – the first two books of a historical Wild Isle series from bestselling author and master storyteller Karen Swan (pictured below) – this third visit to St Kilda in the wind-battered Outer Hebrides, in the months before its real-life permanent evacuation in the summer of 1930, will be Gaelic music to the ears of an army of fans. With sweeping and deliciously romantic stories at their heart, these epic tales of endurance, hardship, and love against the odds were inspired by Swan’s own family history and the unique history of St Kilda, a small island in a remote archipelago which towers out of the storm-tossed waters of the Atlantic, and is now an uninhabited seabird haven and World Heritage Site.
Eighteen-year-old Flora has always dreamt of more than her
tough life on the small Scottish island of St Kilda but her bleak future seems
suddenly brighter in August of 1929 when one of the visiting tourist ships
drops anchor in the bay causing ripples of excitement on the island.
St Kilda’s famous beauty soon catches the eye of the two visiting adventurers, Edward Rushton, a restless spirit, and his friend, James Callaghan, a wealthy businessman and keen fossil-hunter. Both men are bewitched by barefoot Flora who ‘drink her in like a cool glass of water’ but only one of them wins her heart. It’s the start of a brief and torrid love affair – the kind that Flora had always longed for – but the man she has fallen for is leaving to take part in a British Arctic Expedition that will take him far, far away for the next year.
Winter seas now separate the lovers but the enforced
evacuation of St Kilda the following summer promises to reunite them... until
tragedy strikes and Flora’s dreams are shattered. Heartbroken and needing to
support her family who are now on the mainland, despairing Flora knows her
beauty is her only currency and a chance meeting offers hope in the world
beyond ‘the blue line’ of the ocean.
Soon she is the toast of clubs and night life in glamorous Paris and, thanks to her exceptional singing voice, fame and fortune are hers for the taking.... but she knows only too well by now that rich men make empty promises. And then a scandal erupts back home in Scotland, and Flora is implicated, along with her friends, Effie and Mhairi. And as dark secrets come to light, it is a lie by a fellow islander that changes everything...
Seamlessly weaving together the dynamic stories of three young women across various locations and timelines is just one of the many talents of an author who has a well-earned reputation as the queen of epic romances. Immaculately researched and told with the exciting sense of time and place that we have come to expect from this accomplished writer, The Lost Lover once again brings vibrant life to the fascinating island of St Kilda, with its unforgiving climate, grinding hand-to-mouth existence, and socially complex tight-knit community, and then carries us onward to the contrasting glitz and glamour of pre-war Paris.
With echoes of Effie and Mhairi’s stories drifting enticingly
across the action, Flora’s rags-to-riches journey through love, tragedy and new
beginnings takes centre stage, but as the spectre of returning to St Kilda and
being forced to evacuate the only home that the islanders have ever known draws
inexorably closer, the tension builds with each turn of the page.
Expect a gripping plot that celebrates the unbreakable bonds
of friendship and family, but also explores the heart-rending challenges of
loss and grief, and teems with secrets and island superstitions as we travel
with Flora, alongside her close friends Mhairi and Effie, into an unknown and
uncharted future.
And with another jaw-dropping, trademark cliffhanger leaving
Swan’s addicted readers already counting down to the final, thrilling trip to
St Kilda, this passion-filled four-book odyssey – with its exhilarating
backdrop, core murder mystery, and torrid tales of loves lost and found – is
now set fair for one last truly epic chapter which will pull together all the
intriguing strands of an unforgettable story. Don’t miss the boat!
(Macmillan, hardback, £16.99)
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