The Bomber Jacket from First Page to Finally, Published!
The Setting: Why Scotland?
After our second trip to Scotland in 2004, people asked us, “Why did you go back again? You were there once.”
There are many places in the world I’d like to explore, but on visiting Scotland in 1997, I had the inexplicable feeling of returning home. It felt like a connection in the blood, in spite of my Irish and German ancestry. By the end of our 2004 journey, the connection had become the setting of a novel.
In a country the size of South Carolina are towering mountains, verdant glens, sparkling lochs, pristine beaches, crashing seas, vistas of unpeopled space, and breathtaking beauty. The Scots, a warmly welcoming people, live in large cities, small towns, tiny villages, isolated highlands and on countless islands.
It is a place that never grows old because it is ancient to begin with. Remnants of 5000 years of history include windswept Neolithic standing stones, and the ruins of castles and abbeys haunted by ghosts that whisper their story, if you will just stop and listen.
Ancient battlefields mark the sites where thousands fought invaders, starting with the Romans, and continuing with the Vikings and the English. It’s a country that struggled to retain its independence after the English King, Edward I, invaded in 1297. Twenty years of resistance, led by William Wallace, faltered when he was captured and executed in 1305, but the Scots won back their independence at the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314 under Robert the Bruce. Four hundred years later, in an act of irony that many modern-day Scots are still fighting to overturn, Scotland merged with England after both parliaments passed the Acts of Union.
More modern day traces of airfields and naval stations remind the visitor of a time when the Scots stood alongside their fellow British citizens to fend off the Nazis during World War II.
After two trips to Scotland in seven years, much of what I saw, heard, tasted, learned and encountered began to emerge in a story about a young American woman who buys a vintage RAF bomber jacket and begins to have dreams of a pilot with a Scottish brogue.
To me, Scotland is mystical, magical, and mysterious. A place where my soul feels at home.
Where else but Scotland could I have set such a book?
_______
I can’t write about this trip without mentioning some of the many amazing places we saw on those 26 days beyond the sites related to World War II:
- a fairy-tale castle (Blair), a 15th Stuart royal palace long gone to ruins (Linlithgow), and the home of Shakespeare’s McBeth (Scone Palace);
- numerous “wrecked castles” as our granddaughter Zoe called them when we took her to Scotland in 2011;
- the ruins of 12th century abbeys, including one attacked by the Vikings;
- cathedrals with massive, soaring spaces, and stunning stained-glass windows;
- numerous historic towns and villages, including Aberfelty, Dunkeld, Tain, Kirkwall and Stromness;
- some of the tallest and most ancient trees and hedges in Europe;
- the Dallas Dhu whisky distillery museum (in Scotland, whisky is spelled without the “e”);
- four prehistoric sites on the Isle of Orkney: the Standing Stones of Stennes, the Ring of Brodgar (think Stonehenge); Maeshowe, a chambered passage tomb older than the pyramids; and Skara Brae, a neolithic village buried for thousands of years.
We also:
- took a train ride across the famous Glenfinnan Viaduct (the route of the Harry Potter Hogwarts Express);
- revisited the eerie and hauntingly beautiful Loch Ness;
- slept in a supposedly haunted castle turned hotel;
- spent our last two nights and a day in Dublin – my favorite sight: The Book of Kells at Trinity College Library.
And then there was Rosslyn Chapel, south of Edinburgh, featured in the movie, The DaVinci Code. It was undergoing massive repair and was completely encased in scaffolding, but the inside was undisturbed. On the afternoon we visited, a crisp rain-dampened wind blew in the open door and bright sunshine poured through the lovely stained glass, lighting up the intricately carved symbolic stonework.
Amidst tourist voices, camera flashes and pigeons cooing in the courtyard, a cantor read a 10-minute prayer service for the intentions of visitors. It was a moment of intense peace and wondrous transcendence. Afterward, I lit a candle and wrote my intention in the book provided. Within a month, not long after returning home, that prayer was answered.
