18th Century Scotland: Here Burns My Candle by Liz Curtis Higgs

Here Burns My Candle
by Liz Curtis Higgs

It’s been 4 years since Liz Curtis Higgs’s last novel, and she’s made good  use of that time studying Scottish history and the Scriptures. And now she offers a retelling of the beloved Old Testament story of Ruth and Naomi set in 18^th Century Scotland. Visit the Lowlands in Here Burns My Candle. 

Summary:

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 honors the auld ways, even as doubts and fears stir deep within her.

    Her husband, Lord Donald, has secrets of his own, well hidden from the household, yet whispered among the town gossips. 

    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.

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Liz Curtis Higgs was my introduction to Christian Historical Fiction many years ago with her first Lowland Series of a retelling in the Scottish Lowlands of the Biblical story of Jacob and Esau, Jacob's wives, and later Dinah. The time in between waiting for the next novel was torture and thus I turned to other authors to bide my time and hence my current obsession with so many authors and stories today. It seems that it has been a long time in waiting for a new novel from Liz and I was eager to grab this one up. In starting this story, a retelling in Scotland's Edinburgh of the Biblical story of Ruth and Naomi I had some preconceptions for what would happen and was shocked at how slow things seemed to transpire at first, but the story did pick up and sucked me in with it.

Lady Elisabeth Kerr is a Highlander by birth and a Lowlander by marriage it is her story and that of her mother-in-law Lady Marjory Kerr in which the pages are brought to life. Following along as they watch from the recessed side lines of battle between King George of England and Scotland's own Bonny Prince Charlie causes quite a stir of emotions. Learning with them through their own trials as some old ways are forgotten and God makes a difference in their lives is refreshing and eye opening showing his presence in the best of moments and well as the worst.

Knowing that this story was loosely of Ruth and knowing most of the Biblical story by heart, I ended at a point surprised having expected a different part. This just went to show me that I did not know all of the story, just the last part and causes me to have a newly increased thirst to go back and read the scriptures in full to delve into the first eighteen verses which it seems I hardly know at all. With all that said, I am entirely too eager to anticipate the next installment and sequel in Mine is the Night to come in 2011.

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Author Bio:

LIZ CURTIS HIGGS is the author of twenty-seven books with three million copies in print, including: her best-selling historical novels, Thorn in My Heart, Fair Is the Rose, Christy Award-winner Whence Came a Prince, and Grace in Thine Eyes, a Christy Award finalist; My Heart’s in the Lowlands: Ten Days in Bonny Scotland, an armchair travel guide to Galloway; and her contemporary novels, Mixed Signals, a Rita Award finalist, and Bookends, a Christy Award finalist. Visit the author’s extensive website at www.lizcurtishiggs.com.

Check out the book on the WaterBrook Multnomah website. 

*This was book was provided for review by WaterBrook Multnomah.*

Network with Liz and WaterBrook Multnomah: 

http://lizcurtishiggs.com/

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Twitter @WaterBrookPress
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Buy it: 

Available at any major bookstore as well as from the WM link above, if your favorite store does not have it, ask for it! Or buy from Amazon or ChristianBook.com. 

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