Castles in the Snow

Caroline Emma Corbett Reid and her husband, Thomas, hail from Charleston, SC, but move to the estate of Alladale in Scotland when a nasty family lawsuit ruins their reputation. After five glorious years living at Alladale, the beautiful Caroline awakens tied to her bed inside her favorite suite, the Willow. After three days without food or water, she realizes her end is near. This story features flashbacks of her life in Charleston, SC, and Inverness, Scotland, and her struggle to remember what happened in the final days before finding herself shackled. The reader is quickly drawn into this tale of greed and murder as the lives of this couple are detailed. Historical facts mingled with the appeal of a mystery in this whodunit will keep the reader engaged late into the night. Castles in the Snow is based on Paul Lister, a true ecologist and the actual founder of Alladale, a 23,000-acre wilderness reserve in the Scottish Highlands. Paul’s goal is to create a controlled wolf reserve within his beloved estate. This great conservationist’s story has received media attention from 60 Minutes and other sources in the US and the UK. The importance of philanthropists like Paul Lister and their impact on our world challenges us to take the fate of our planet seriously.

Other contributors: Paul Lister

Paperback: 979-8645758141

Audio

"5 Stars

Castles in the Snow: Alladale is a historical mystery written by Linda Heavner Gerald. Caroline struggled to clear her mind of the fog, still holding it captive. She knew it was Alladale, her lovely home, but why was the window near her bed wide open, making it feel as though a thousand tiny shards of ice were assaulting her eyes, her lips, her face. And there in the hearth was a roaring fire, its warmth overbearing despite the chill of the open windows. Her hands and feet were manacled; she was restrained, but what had happened, how had she been made a prisoner in her own home—and why.

Where was Thomas? While she lay there, her body buffeted by the heat of the fire and the chill blasting through the open window, she began to remember her earliest days in the wedding-cake home she shared with her parents in Charleston, South Carolina. Thomas and his brother Max were a part of that early life as well; their home painted a blazing gold by their father, a gold which, captured in the late afternoon sun, seemed to be metallic rather than merely bricks painted gold. Thomas and Max each sought Caroline for their own as the three grew up together, but Thomas had won her hand, and together they went in search of their ancestral roots, back across the Atlantic to Scotland.

Linda Heavner Gerald's Castles in the Snow: Alladale has the reader wondering who has taken Caroline captive and why as they follow the details of her life in Charleston and later in Scotland, and learn about Scottish history through her and Thomas's research. There's also the tantalizing aspect of the 23,000-acre nature preserve they intended to create when they purchased Alladale. Gerald's story is well-written and will make the more imaginative and impressionable reader begin to notice the scent of heather as they read this marvelous tale. Her characters are credible, and her mystery bristles with red herrings and clues for the armchair sleuth to puzzle over. Castles in the Snow: Alladale is highly recommended.”
—Reviewed By Jack Magnus for Readers' Favorite