Echoes of the Clearances
They had lived on the land for generations. Then the world around them began to change.
A family story of land, love and survival on the Isle of Mull during the Highland Clearances.
The story of Echoes of the Clearances grew from William A. Allan’s own family history and his research into the MacGillivrays of the Isle of Mull.
His family’s roots lie particularly on Mull, where generations lived through the economic and social changes that transformed Highland communities during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Genealogy, census material, estate records, maps and the surviving landscapes provide the historical framework. The characters’ conversations, relationships and many of the intimate moments of family life are imagined, but they are placed within a world shaped by the surviving evidence.
Available in both paperback and as an ebook
About the book
When the land changes, so does everything else.
Isle of Mull, nineteenth century.
For generations, the MacGillivray family have lived within the communities, traditions and landscapes of Mull. Their lives are tied to the land, to one another and to a way of life that seems as permanent as the hills around them.
But Scotland is changing.
As estates are reorganised and old relationships between people and land begin to break down, families who have lived in the same places for generations face poverty, uncertainty and eviction as the potato famine has been hitting the island communities hard.
Echoes of the Clearances follows one family through that changing world — exploring not only the loss of land, but the pressure placed upon family, community and identity when the familiar foundations of life are taken away.
Drawing inspiration from real family history and the documented experiences of people on Mull, the novel brings the Highland Clearances down from statistics and estate records to the level at which they were actually lived: around firesides, on crofts, along roads and within families forced to decide whether to remain or leave.
The story continues in Dispossessed.
The consequences of the Clearances did not end when a family left Mull.
Dispossessed continues the wider MacGillivray story through Margaret and Martin McGilvray as they leave Scotland and begin again on the other side of the world. Their journey takes them from Mull to Glasgow and Liverpool, across the seas to Geelong, through the Victorian goldfields and ultimately to the plains of Victoria.
Although the novels are connected, each can be read as a standalone story.
Recognition
ABLE Golden Book Awards Finalist
Echoes of the Clearances was selected as a finalist in the ABLE Golden Book Awards.
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Behind the Story
For further information on the stories behind Echoes of the Clearances click the links below: