Corrag agrees to talk to him so that the truth may be known about her involvement, and so that she may be less alone, in her final days.

Charles is hoping to gain evidence that will prove that King William was involved in the Murder/Massacre so that King James could be reinstated. Both sections are equally powerful in the way they reveal the inner thoughts, values, and personal struggles of both Corrag and Charles.

The novel alternates between Corrag’s voice and Charles Leslie’s point of view which is cleverly related to us by a series of lovely letters written by him to his wife back home. Corrag is a wise and gentle soul whose ability to know herbs and help people has branded her a witch. Leslie, but it turned out to be a very clever way to tell the story and to track the dawning realization of Charles Leslie that Corrag is much more than an object of pity or scorn. In Glencoe we had Corrag, who is said to have lived a solitary life in the mountains and been of “outstanding badness”.

Despite his feeling that witches do the Devil's work and "must be purged by fire or water, for their own sake," he goes to Corrag's cell to question her about the murders. And not only she does she want a home and a family, she wants the home and family of the son of the clan leader. I have had it with every starry sky, with each bee that knocked against me as it rose up from a bloom.She is forced to leave her mother who will be burned at the stake for witchcraft and flees to the Scottish highlands. Foul, too, is its inmate whose high, girlish voice spoke of kindness and good deeds - but I am not tricked by that. It is the conversion story of a preacher who based his world around the law, the scriptures, the biases of his people at the time. This beauty is eventually destroyed by the massacre of the MacDonalds at the hands of the soldiers, their own guests.

She takes up living in the wilds of Glencoe, and her life becomes entwined with the McDonald clan who live there. The era of witch-hunts is coming to an end - but Charles Leslie, an Irish propagandist and Jacobite, hears of the Massacre and, keen to publicise it, comes to the tollbooth to question her on the events of that night, and the weeks preceding it. But the character of Corrag – the book – moved me to look even more closely at what surrounds me in the natural world. It is easy to ignore it, for sometimes it says what we'd rather it did not - and it is so hard to risk the things we have. Every tiny thing is spoken of with such love and passion and she notices everything – a dew drop on a leaf, the changing colours of the rocks through the day, the silver sand as the grey mare gallops over beaches in the moonlight.From the bed of dirty straw in her tiny cell known as a "tollbooth," Corrag tells her story to daily visitor Reverend Leslie, who is there to gather information on the massacre. Charles Leslie, a supporter of the former King James, makes his way from Ireland in the dead of winter to a prison in Inverary Scotland where a witness to the massacre is housed. I have a soft spot for anything set among the Scottish mountains, and there is plenty to enjoy here, but ultimately this mixture of history and fantasy proved a little too implausible, and a little too sentimental for my taste.

Corrag herself is a consummately drawn character, a half-feral scrap of a thing with tangled hair and a great tenderness for all living creatures. As the story begins, Corrag is chained to a cell in Inverary awaiting her death at the stake while being treated worse than an animal. I have so many passages marked in this book; I can find a quote that speaks to me on almost every page. We all have our stories, and we speak of them, and weave them into other people’s stories--that's how it goes, does it not?

I learned about the Massacre of Glencoe - on a frosty winter’s morning in 1692 King William III and his redcoats slaughtered men, women and children of the Scottish MacDonald Clan. My favorite part of this book was the growing friendship between Corrag and Charles--two very different people who eventually come to understand and trust each other. I'm not sure if that's why I waited so long to read this, or if I just wasn't ever in the mood at any given point, but I finally decided to take the plunge and let the chips fall where they may. It is easy to ignore it, for sometimes it says what we’d rather it did not – and it is so hard to risk the things we have.