The Devil in Tartan

Twenty-four-year-old Noel Paige goes off with her 14-year-old stepbrother to Brierbank in Nova Scotia for the summer. Noel is to complete the genealogy Robbie's father was working on when he died - the tracing of his family back to the Scotsman Angus James Kendrum. Angus was a son of the fifth Earl of Strathcoran, massacred at the Battle of Culloden in April of 1746. Somehow Angus, 16, and his younger brother escaped both death or slavery after the battle and made their way to America where they settled for a time in Georgia; many years later they emigrated to Nova Scotia. The family ran to bearing sons, and by 1979 there were a host of Kendrums in and around Brierbank and elsewhere across Canada. One of them is the legitimate Earl of Strathcoran, though nobody knows who he is, since Angus and his brother were illiterate and left no written records for their descendants. As Noel settles down to her task and Robbie starts getting acquainted with his cousins, it begins to appear that somebody is making a methodical effort to wipe out the male members of the clan who have the most likely claim to the Earl's mantle. There are near-fatal "accidents". Noel, who has vivid dreams and a touch of ESP, is conscious that ghosts are walking and talking in the house she and Robbie occupy. She overhears fragments of conversation between them which start to fill in the picture about the long years during which the Kendrum history has been a blank. Violence comes to a crescendo just as the long-planned "Gathering", a sort of mammoth family picnic with songs, dances, and games for cousins from near and far, is about to take place.