Book Review - Veil of Time by Claire R. McDougall

Have you ever been in a museum looking at artifacts from times gone by and wondered about the people that made them, worked with them and lived with them?  

Claire R. McDougall, in Veil of Time, has woven such a story.  One protagonist in two time periods - the present day and a time just at the entry of Christianity into Scotland, before the time that witches were hunted and burned. In her time travel, Ma-khee experiences the challenges of those early days just to survive when in the present Maggie lives with limited convenience and abundance. 

The setting is in an actual location in Scotland, Dunadd, where some stone markers survived in present day. Maggie, the protagonist ~ or Ma-khee ~ slips back and forth in time while she awaits brain surgery. Maggie, divorced, has a son in the present day, on the brink of adulthood and still needing his mom. Ma-khee meets and falls in love with a man in the past, whose daughter is the same age as the daughter Maggie had lost to epilepsy. One wonders if her dreams are just that ~ dreams and the effects of her epilepsy ~ until she leaves her wedding ring in the past with Fergus, her new love. When she awakens in the present the ring has vanished.

Important emotional entanglements in both time periods leave Maggie/Ma-khee with a decision. Which time will she return to and stay in?

Because I have epilepsy, I was immediately drawn to the story.  Shortly after the beginning, that connection fell away. I kept reading because the story was interesting and engaging.

“It’s all a shadow of time.just reflections in water.”

~ Margaret Livingstone (Maggie), Veil of Time

Title:  Veil of Time

Author:  Claire R. McDougall

Copyright 2014

Publisher: Gallery Books - A Division of Simon & Schuster

Publication Date: March 2014

Format:  Soft Cover

Type:  Fiction

ISBN: 978-1-4516-9381-2

ISBN: 978-1-4516-9382-9 (e-book)