On the Crofter's Trail

Book excerpt: Tracing the legacies of the small farmers displaced and scattered in nineteenth-century Scotland, this is “a powerful, poetic, personal Highland Odyssey” (Times Literary Supplement). In the Clearances of the nineteenth century, crofts—once the mainstay of Highland life in Scotland—were swept away as the land was put over to sheep grazing. Many of the people of the Highlands and islands of Scotland were forced from their homes by landowners in the Clearances. Some fled to Nova Scotia and beyond. In this book, David Craig sets out to discover how many of their stories survive in the memories of their descendants. He travels through twenty-one islands in Scotland and Canada, many thousands of miles of moor and glen, and presents the words of men and women of both countries as they recount the suffering of their forebears. “[David] has the eye, the imagination and the descriptive density of early Bruce Chatwin.” —Toronto Globe & Mail