When Nicholas and Charlotte in the quiet seclusion of their English boarding school, learned that their widowed mother was going to remarry, they were genuinely pleased. It was a bit disconcerting to hear that their prospective stepfather was an American, but the real shock came with the disclosure that he had four children. The idea of sharing their summer and their beloved cottage on the west coast of Scotland with these strangers left Nicholas and Charlotte aghast. Three thousand miles away the four American children were having misgivings of their own.

And what a summer it proved to be! Through the early glorious days of hot, dazzling sun and the later days of wild winds and driving rain, the glens and lochs rang with their battle cries, but by summer's end, a clan had been forged—as indivisible as it had once been fiercely separate.

From the dust jacket of the American edition