In the magnificent Scottish Highlands, two devoted mothers separated by centuries discover a haunting connection in a gripping novel by the USA Today bestselling author of The Girl Who Wrote in Silk.
Intrigued? Well read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from Smoke on the Wind by Kelli Estes, which is out June 24th 2025.
Struggling with the tragic end of her marriage, Keaka Denney is on a bittersweet adventure in Scotland with her son, Colin. She’s joining him on a weeklong hike along the West Highland Way before he enters university in Glasgow. Soon into the journey, Keaka’s disquieting visions begin―a woman from ages past reaching for Colin, a burning cottage, violence.
Scotland, 1801. After Sorcha Chisholm and her son are wrenched from their home in a brutal eviction, they face an arduous trek toward a new beginning. When Sorcha learns she’s wanted for a murder she didn’t commit, she and her son run for their lives. Then help arrives from the strangest woman in the most unexpected ways.
Centuries apart, Keaka and Sorcha walk the same path―devoted mothers in circumstances beyond their control who will do anything to keep their sons safe. Defying logic, they find strength in each other. But what does their connection mean? And how far will it go?
CHAPTER ONE
Sorcha
Whitsunday, 24 May 1801; Srath Ghlais (Strathglass), Scotland
A cry of alarm drifted faintly to Sorcha Chisholm’s ears as she pushed to her feet and slapped the cow’s rump to move her along after milking. But when she looked down at the village in the strath, she saw nothing amiss.
She told herself it was only children playing, running off their energy before being expected to sit quietly through the Sunday sermon. Sorcha glanced toward the kirk a short distance away. The service would begin soon, but first she needed to carry the milk home, slip into her good church shoes, and collect her son. She hoped he’d remembered to dress in his best trousers and jacket or she’d have to wait while he changed. If they had time, they’d gather wild daisies on the way to the kirk to leave on her other children’s graves.
She left the pail on the ground and leaned backward to stretch her aching muscles as she wiped her hands on her apron. Then, indulging in one quiet moment more before facing the day, she pulled her wool plaide tighter around her body and let her gaze drift over the greening fields below and the thatched stone cottages that were the homes of her dear friends and neighbors. The gray sky above silvered the Abhainn Ghlais river as it meandered across the wide valley bottom on its way to the North Sea. Her heart felt heavy with love for this place she’d called home since her wedding day twenty-five years past.
When her husband, her sweet Tàm, had brought her to this strath so many years ago, the community had welcomed her as one of their own. Even with Tàm gone now, she never wanted to leave. The valley, its people—even the firs, bracken, heather, and stones—were as much a part of her as her bones and flesh.
A promising ray of sunshine burned through the early-morning cloud cover and warmed the white mutch she wore over her hair. She lifted her face to the sky and let come the memories that were never far but only indulged in during quiet moments such as this. In her mind’s eye, she could see Tàm swinging one of their babies high in the air, the babe’s squeals underscored by his deep laughter. She saw Tàm and their two boys working side by side, threshing bere in August or telling stories as they cut peat in May. She saw Tàm and their oldest, Dòmhnall, marching off with the Inverness-shire Fencibles to fight in Ireland, neither of them to return but both looking so strong and proud that all she could do was smile.
Another cry of alarm—louder this time, and so unexpected on this blessed morning—caused her eyes to fly open and her breath to catch in her throat.
In the valley below, to the north, a knot of men on horseback was making its way toward a cluster of cottages, including her own, causing an oily coldness to wash over her. She squinted to see them better.
One man, dressed all in black from the rounded hat on the top of his head down to his boots, led the pack of what must be a dozen others. He held the reins in his left hand and carried a club in his right. Why would he have a club?
She took a step forward down the hill and turned her gaze upon the other men in the pack. She stopped breathing. They all carried clubs.
A flash of light snapped her attention back to the leader. That was a pistol at his hip, glinting in the sun. Fear slammed through her body like a blow.
And then she saw the smoke.
Every single cottage in the valley behind the men was on fire.
Her own cottage lay directly in their path, and inside was her only living child, her only remaining family.
“Aonghas!”
She shouted his name, although he couldn’t possibly hear her from this distance, and started to run, not caring if she drew the men’s attention to her. She would welcome their attention if it saved her boy from harm. She focused singularly on her cottage, searching for Aonghas, hoping he’d snuck off with his friends somewhere even though he was supposed to be doing chores.
Running as quickly as the terrain and her bare feet allowed, she flew down the hillside, her gaze searching for him. Please don’t be in the house!
Pain shot through her foot and up her leg as her bare toes caught on a rock, tripping her. Her legs tangled in her long skirt, and before she knew it, she was on her hands and knees, her palms scraped and bloody.
Cursing her clumsiness, she ignored the pain and raced onward.
There! There was Aonghas, coming from their kale yard at the back of the cottage. He disappeared through the open cottage door and didn’t seem to be in any hurry. He must not yet have seen the men who were now in the process of carrying her neighbor Màiri’s rocking chair from her cottage and throwing it in her yard as her husband hurried behind, carrying a large chest. Màiri huddled in the yard, holding her children tightly to her side as she screamed at the men to leave them be. The closer Sorcha ran, the more smoke she could smell and the more cries she could hear coming from other homes. She could even taste the burning thatch now, its acrid flavor mixing with the terror already on her tongue.
No matter how fast she ran across the bere and oat fields, it wasn’t fast enough. She shouldn’t have dawdled on the hillside. She should have finished milking the cow and returned straight home, where she would have been with Aonghas long before the men showed up. She would be there now, keeping him safe.
Keeping Aonghas safe was her reason for living. She would do anything she had to do to see her only remaining child grow to adulthood. His need of her was the only thing that had pulled her from her bed after his brother Dòmhnall’s death. It was the only thing that still got her up every morning. She would not fail him.
She was still a full field away when she saw one of the men enter her cottage.
Hot tears dripped down her face, but she didn’t bother to wipe them away. She lifted her skirt higher so she could run faster. “Aonghas!” Desperation ripped his name from her throat.
Finally, finally she reached her cottage and rushed inside through the attached byre, calling her son’s name yet again.
The sudden darkness of the interior blinded her, and it took a moment before she saw the scene in front of her. Another moment to understand it.
Aonghas stood near the fire, which always burned on the earthen floor in the center of their one-room home. His head was bent down as he stared at the man lying on the ground, unmoving, unconscious, a pool of dark-red blood under his head, his skin gray and waxy.
“Aonghas?”
Her boy lifted his tearstained face to her, and at the expression of horror and guilt she saw there, she decided not to ask him any questions about what had happened. What mattered now was gathering what they could carry and then leaving before the rest of the men arrived.
It was probably best if she didn’t know, anyway.
A shout came from the yard outside, and they both jerked as though struck. As Sorcha and her son stared at each other in horror, a voice called out in her native Gaelic, “Cummings, if you’re still in there, get out! We’re lighting it up!”
And then, to her further horror, Sorcha heard the crackling sound of dry grasses bursting into flame over her head. She tore her gaze away from Aonghas to the pitched ceiling above, where sparks were already drifting down through the thatching and roof timbers. Hens roosting in the rafters squawked in panic and beat their wings frantically as they escaped to the ground, trailing feathers and straw after them.
She didn’t spare another glance at the man lying on the floor. “Go!” she yelled to Aonghas. “I’ll be right behind you.”
Without waiting to see if he obeyed, Sorcha jumped over the man’s prone legs and dashed to the box bed in the corner of the room, where she kept her most prized possessions. She wouldn’t have time to gather any food, but she wasn’t going to leave here without her coin purse. She had a feeling they were going to need every last pence.
With purse in hand, she turned toward the door and found, to her admiration and horror, Aonghas struggling to drag the man’s body out. Sparks were falling now, singeing hair and clothing. “Aonghas, go!”
Just then, a loud groan sounded overhead. She looked up in time to see fire race along the roof beams. Every twig of thatching seemed to be aglow. “Run!”
She jumped over the man’s body and pushed Aonghas toward the rectangle of light that was the door.
They made it out just as the roof fell with the loudest noise Sorcha had ever heard. Her throat, nose, and eyes burning, and with tears running down her face, she fell to her knees in the yard, coughing. Aonghas dropped beside her.
For several long moments all she could do was cough and fight to draw breath into her smoke-burnt lungs. But then she heard the screams of children. The anguished howls of women. The furious shouts of men. The terror-filled bleats and bellows of goats, sheep, and cows.
Blinking to clear her streaming eyes, she brought into focus her surroundings and wondered if she’d died and gone to hell.
Fire engulfed every house in the strath. Dark-gray smoke rolled into dark-gray clouds, indistinguishable from one another. People and animals rushed about in panic as men on horseback rode past, laughing.
She was unable to move as she took it all in: Her next-door neighbor sitting expressionless and stunned amid a meager pile of belongings; her infant daughter flailing on her lap; her older children clinging to her, crying. Another neighbor gesturing wildly and shouting at Alasdair Macrath, the chief’s factor. Factor Macrath resting a hand on the butt of his pistol and sneering back with contempt.
Sorcha blindly reached for Aonghas and pulled him against her side as she watched a man laugh as he slit a goat’s throat and left it to bleed out in the mud before spitting insults at the distraught woman who owned the animal. Yet another neighbor clenched her cow’s lead tightly and begged the man pulling it away to give it back. “You cannot take our beast! We’ll starve without her!”
Starve. The word hit Sorcha like a blade in the chest. It was the truth. They were going to starve without their cows or access to their kale yards, or to the grain growing in the runrig fields. It had been six months since Factor Macrath had served Sorcha and all the villagers a Summons of Removal, signed by their clan chief, An Siosal—the Chisholm. None had believed it would come to this. Their rents were not in arrears. They had the hereditary right to live on this land that they and their ancestors had worked for generations to make productive. The people had nowhere else to go. No money to start over elsewhere. No family in other parts of the country with room or provisions enough to take them in. No industrious skills other than farming.
Sorcha and her neighbors had convinced themselves that An Siosal would never allow matters to come to this. They had believed that dùthchas—the hereditary right of occupation rooted by ancient lineage to a particular place that is held by all the people of the clan—would stay An Siosal’s hand in his eviction threats. The land belonged to all the people equally, not to An Siosal or his family. They’d thought the chief understood this.
They’d been so wrong.
She must have made a noise, because, suddenly, one of the factor’s men stopped in front of her and Aonghas. Sorcha’s eyes were drawn to the wooden club he tapped against his leg, and she tasted blood. Dozens of iron nails protruded from the club, and snagged on one was a clump of human hair. “You can remove yourselves from An Siosal’s land this minute or I can remove you for him. Your choice.”
Sorcha heard more than felt the moan that slipped from her lips. Keeping her eyes on the club, she dragged Aonghas to his feet with her and backed away from the man.
Then, holding tightly to Aonghas’s hand, she turned and ran.
Excerpted from SMOKE ON THE WIND by Kelli Estes. Reprinted with permission from Lake Union Publishing, an imprint of Amazon Publishing. All rights reserved.
