By turns funny, heartwarming and occasionally sad, this memoir offers an American woman's view of pastoral Scotland today. It is an account of the author's marriage and her years spent at The Guynd, her husband's ancestral estate. We follow her steep learning curve in dealing with a grand and crumbling mansion, an overgrown landscape, troublesome tenants, local aristocracy, Scottish rituals and a husband for whom change is anathema. A son and heir draws Belinda Rathbone into an intimate relationship with every tier of local society, while a visiting friend heightens the strain of the culture gap. Alternating between enchantment and despair, Rathbone digs into family and local history in an effort to understand her surroundings and free her husband from the grip of the past. Like a letter home from a strange land, this tale of the journey through the wrought iron gates into the living past is both wry and poignant, both oddball and reflective of the ties that bind us.