Dan Makgow Smith - Foothills Highland Games

While returning from the AQS Quilt Show in Knoxville my friend Sue and I shopped our way back. At one of our stops I spotted this book on the check out counter. A thistle photo is like a stop sign for a couple of Scots (persons of Scottish decent). Beside it was a newspaper article, with photos, about the author - Dan Makgow Smith (Yes, he was wearing a kilt in the photo!). My friend and I are very involved in the S.C.O.T.S. (Scottish Clans of the South) organization, that puts on the Foothills Highland Games (November 7 - at Jackson Park, Hendersonville NC). We are always "brainstorming" to find new venues for the festival. Soooo, I told her, "We need to find out how to get him to come do a book signing, at the festival." The store sold me the last copy they had in stock, gave us Dan's business card and they took Sue's business card to pass on to Dan. Sue has been in contact with Dan and he will be coming to do a book signing at the festival.



Excerpt from the book follows:

Malcolm Macgow is good at what he does: a Scottish blacksmith. Living in Forfar, Scotland in the 1600's with his son, Ian, they make ends meet. Malcolm comes from a long line of blacksmith's and is teaching his son the trade as well. Although not officially single, he lives his life that way since his wife left him some time ago and has basically abandoned the family. His life takes a sudden change when a woman, Kate MacPherson, enters his life and turns him completely upside down emotionally. It doesn't take long before he falls madly in love with her. His life takes a turn for the worse when the local magistrate teams up with a group of domineering men who are bent on taking Malcolm's land right out from under him for purposes that are diabolical and not in the best interests of the town of Forfar. Malcolm's brother, Daniel, now living in the American colonies, has his own set of problems when he is accused of being in league with the Salem witch crowd. Daniel had sailed to America to make his own way in life as a fur trader, but fate had other plans for him in the name of an old family nemesis named, Theodore Higginbottom. Fleeing into the wilderness, Daniel evades capture and meets a woman by the name of Logan Moss, who he falls in love with. Eventually Daniel and Logan make their way back to Salem and prepare to make a stand with whatever awaits them there. In the present time, the brother's descendants come together, as family from America travel to Scotland where they discover their long lost relatives some three-hundred plus years later.