Here Burns My Candle by Liz Curtis Higgs

A mother who cannot face her future.
A daughter who cannot escape her past.

Lady Elisabeth Kerr is a keeper of secrets. A Highlander by birth and a Lowlander by marriage, she turns to the auld ways, desperate to conceal a generations-old scandal that taints her family’s name.

Her husband, Lord Donald, has secrets of his own, well hidden from the household, yet whispered among the town gossips. Elisabeth cannot—must not—discover the truth, or all will be ruined.

His mother, the dowager Lady Marjory, hides gold beneath her floor and guilt inside her heart. Though her two abiding passions are maintaining her place in society and coddling her grown sons, Marjory’s many regrets, buried in Greyfriars Churchyard, continue to plague her.

One by one the Kerr family secrets begin to surface, even as bonny Prince Charlie and his rebel army ride into Edinburgh in September 1745, intent on capturing the crown.

A timeless story of love and betrayal, loss and redemption, flickering against the vivid backdrop of eighteenth-century Scotland, Here Burns My Candle illumines the dark side of human nature, even as hope, the brightest of tapers, lights the way home.

A Reader’s Guide and Scottish Glossary Are Included.

My Review:
Thank you to the good folks at Christian Fiction Blog Alliance and WaterBrook Press for my copy of one of my favorite authors newest historical fiction works. Although it falls into the category of Christian fiction, there's very little that separates this novel from a secular work. Other than the absence of graphic sexual scenes and profanity, the novel contains only a few references to Psalms.

Set in Scotland and written in the third-person point of view of Elisabeth, the wife of a titled gentlemen, the intricate plot unfolds during the Jacobite Rebellion. Characters are well-formed, and the dialogue is spot on. The one caveat I have is that it leaves me wanting more, and the sequel is not scheduled until 2011. (sigh)

If you'd like to read chapter one, click here.

If you'd like to buy a copy, click here.