Jasper MacTavish

During the 18th and early 19th Centuries, English landlords began and completed the process of evicting tenant farmers and shepherds from the Scottish Highlands. These so-called "Clearances" relocated the Highlanders to the coastal lowlands where farming on marginal land added to their resentment of the English nobility. The Highland inhabitants were uprooted to increase the grazing land for a new breed of sheep - the Moreno - which was prized for its wool production to supply the English textile industry.Many Highlanders were forced to harvest seaweed - kelp - to supplement their meager farming incomes. Kelp was an important source of iodine - a medicinal antiseptic still in modest use today. Because many of the Highlanders had large families who could not be supported by subsistence farming and by kelping, the youngest siblings were often sent to state-supported orphanages. To this day, the animosity arising from the Clearances still festers in the Scottish Highlands - a land deserted to make way for sheep. This novel deals with one young migr ' who, forcibly separated from his family and placed in a state-run orphanage, finds himself thrust into the cauldron of history during tumultuous times.