After being kidnapped by his villainous and miserly uncle, sixteen-year-old David Balfour escapes with the help of Jacobite fugitive Alan Breck and becomes involved in the struggle of Scottish Highlanders against English rule.

Carrie settles into the shadow of Slains Castle in Scotland, creates a heroine named for one of her own ancestors, and starts to write about the Jacobite invasion of 1708. When she can no longer tell the difference between today and centuries ago, is she dealing with an ancestral memory-- a memory that might destroy her?