NC Highlander Descendant Returns to Kintyre

7th Generation Highland Scot Pens Novel on Stone of Destiny

A rock. A sword. A crown. Letters. A Scots legacy.

Beautifully staged and guarded at Edinburgh Castle in Scotland, the rock with a dozen names and at least that many legends of provenance–the Stone of Destiny–returned to Scotland in a cavalcade of royal limousines on November 30, 1996. The Scots’ Coronation Stone will have resided there for thousands of daily viewers for twenty-one years on its anniversary this year.

In a note of interesting happenstance, Prince Andrew himself returned the Stone to Scotland, November 30th, an official holiday named since 1320 St. Andrews Day, a commemoration of the martyrdom of Andrew the apostle in circa 70A.D. The cultural and official exchange took place in Edinburgh Castle. Although accompanied by much pomp and circumstance, the return of the Stone purloined by England’s monarch Edward as war spoils in 1296 from its home at the Palace of Scone in Scotland, is a nominal gesture since it was ‘given’ on a string. The Scots must return it when the next royal is crowned in England. See more photographs on Pinterest.

Kenna Alford believed seeing the Stone’s return firsthand worthy of supreme effort in the novel Stone of Her Destiny, worthy enough to make her life obsession. Positioning Stone’s return with private agendas abroad, she catapulted all to the land of her ancestors. Her knowledge of Scottish forebears bracketed seven generations and encased the very land on which she had lived in North Carolina on the Cape Fear, land acquired by them and kept in family possession since circa 1736. And gave her letters tracing back all the way to that first generation emigrating from Tarbert, out of Campbeltown.

Together, she and Lane, the heir apparent and lord of the castle Blackheart Heights cover this event and many to come. Just like in real life, royals, processions, regalia, all are quite seductive elements to the commoner to watch, follow, and enjoy. If you are close, you can participate in the festivities. And the intrigue.

Kenna thrives on intrigue. The Gothic mansion she grew up in, a Southern ghost-ridden plantation house, has prepared her for the extended stay she begins at gloomy Blackheart Heights with its strange visitor, a little girl, a doll, happenings, and weird presences going bump in the night.

She finds that she has competition in the romantic department, however, and that her lessons in falconing given by Lane at Blackheart are not the only inroads into his life and heart, but that he has something going with a raven-haired beauty named Tarra Montfort. She finds out that the elite family of Montfort’s are highly-placed Masons that plumb the depths beyond their own estate into the castle where she stays. She finds they have a vested interest in that castle, as well.

With the rug pulled out from under her at home, freed to follow the Stone to Scotland and back and if necessary, over the whole world–to her own destiny, she does just that. Freed to love and to marry. Freed to look under rocks, trace the journey of the Stone, and stir up a world of controversy. Free to learn the enhanced significance of the Speaking Stone to international groups bent on acquiring it for themselves. And so many of these groups think the wrong one lies in Edinburgh. So many think she knows something that the rest of the world does not.

She learned the price of her obsession, endless stalking and intrusion, fear for her life and that of her loved ones too late to withdraw from the grim trek her curiosity and resultant knowledge set her out on. She is driven, drawn, and determined, like any self-respecting redhead of Scottish descent. And like most women, susceptible to a romantic relationship.

Stone of Her Destiny is a Gothic suspense slated to appear as an E book on November 30th this year: St. Andrews Day.