Friday Book Whimsy: The Winter Sea

I think when we were studying World History in high school, I was more interested in boys and make up and rock and roll music. Maybe that’s why I enjoy historical novels so much now. I find that well-researched historical fiction is a pretty good way to learn about the past as long as you remember that it is a novel and take things with a grain of salt.

In 1708, a fleet of Scottish and French soldiers attempted to bring back the exiled King James of the Stewart line of Scotland to reclaim his crown. I’m not giving anything away when I tell you they were unsuccessful. Scotland was often unsuccessful in their battles against England.

The Winter Sea by Susanna Kearsley is the story of a famous historical novelist who moves to the Highlands area of Scotland to research and write a book about the Jacobites who were behind this movement to return King James to the throne. The novelist, Carrie McClelland, decides to use her own Scottish ancestors as the characters, despite the fact that she knows nothing about them.

However, it soon becomes eerily apparent that, though she thinks she’s writing fiction, everything she writes, including character names, is factual. This understandably creeps her out. Through discussions with a local physician, she becomes familiar with a phenomenon called ancestral or genetic memory, which is memory present at birth passed down through DNA over spans of time. (As an aside, the belief in ancestral memory still exists today in some New Age circles. In fact, it’s tied into the Jungian psychological theory.)

So, while all of that sounds really complicated and somewhat silly, I found the novel to be an interesting account of the early Jacobite uprising, and a really grand story. Kearsley clearly is a wonderful researcher. In fact, in her Author’s Note, she points out that she tried to use the best evidence possible to support a scene. She says: “If an account was written down of what was said between two people, then I’ve had them say the same thing in my book. If Captain Gordon’s ship was in Leith harbor on a certain day, I’ve put him there.”

The story goes back and forth from contemporary to 1708, but in an interesting way. The contemporary story is told in first person, and the historical story is presented as McClelland’s book. I found this to be less confusing than some novels that take place in two time periods.

I have never read anything by Kearsley. In fact, I obtained The Winter Sea literally months ago on my Nook as part of Barnes and Noble’s Free Friday book marketing. The plot description didn’t grab me for some reason even though I am such a fan of historical novels. The history of Scotland just didn’t seem to be something in which I was particularly interested. But this novel grabbed me from the very beginning. I love Kearsley’s writing and her plotting.

I found the contemporary story to be as interesting as the historical story. I like to say I am not a fan of romance novels, but secretly I think I am (as long as there are no heaving bodices and bare-chested men on the cover). The contemporary love story, which complimented the love story that took place in McClelland’s novel, was fun.

The supporting characters were interesting, and Kearsley chose not to have a lot of drama in the contemporary story, perhaps because there was so much drama in the historical story. The ending had a nice, unexpected twist that I thought was well done and well thought out. It could have been cheesy, but wasn’t.

I will read other books by this author, and highly recommend this book to anyone who likes historical romantic fiction.