Historical fiction, talks, Mull heritage, genealogy
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Echoes of the Clearances
A Novel of Love, loss and survival – Inspired by True Events
Where heather blooms and stone walls crumble, their whispers endure.
Echoes of the Clearances is a moving historical novel inspired by the true lives of crofters on the Isle of Mull during the Highland Clearances of the 1850s — including the author’s own MacGillivray ancestors.
In a time of forced removals and vanishing townships, one family’s love for the land is tested by grief, loyalty, and impossible choices. Through vivid landscapes, fading letters, and the echo of footfalls in abandoned glens, the story explores how we carry the past with us — in our names, our silences, and the land that shaped us.
Told with lyrical depth and deep-rooted compassion, this is a story for anyone who has ever felt the pull of a place they call home — even if they’ve never lived there.
What Readers Are Saying
"Echoes of the Clearances is a well researched and written book that will pull at your heart strings.If you want to know about the real life during the Highland Clearance on the Isle of Mull, this is the book to read."
Dispossessed
Forthcoming historical novel
Due out Winter 2026
The companion novel to Echoes of the Clearances, Dispossessed follows Martin and Margaret McGilvray from the Isle of Mull to colonial Victoria, tracing a family’s search for land, dignity and belonging — and the moral questions that arise when the dispossessed become settlers on another people’s country.