Searching for Shona

During the evacuation of children from Edinburgh in the early days of World War II, shy, wealthy Margaret on her way to relatives in Canada trades places and identities with the orphaned Shona bound for the Scottish countryside. In taking Shona’s name, Marjorie inherits a battered suitcase containing Shona’s only possessions – a few shabby clothes and a portrait of a Victorian house that holds a clue to Shona’s past. Marjorie and a little orphan girl named Anna are billeted with two eccentric sisters. As the years pass they form a close family. However, the question of Marjorie real identity troubles her and she must find Shona when the war finally ends.

In a spur-of-the-moment decision made in the chaos of a crowded Edinburgh railway station at the start of World War II, two young evacuees trade places, names and lives. Shy, wealthy Marjorie Malcolm Scott, on her way to stay with relatives in Canada, becomes Shona McInnes, an adventurous orphan bound for a small town in the south of Scotland. Neither girl foresees that the war will last for six years. In taking Shona's name, Marjorie inherits a battered suitcase containing Shona's only possessions--a few shabby clothes and an oil painting of a large Victorian house, Shona's only clue to her past. Marjorie also has charge of Anna, a backward child from the orphanage who was assigned to Shona's care. Marjorie and Anna are billeted with two kindly, but eccentric, middle-aged sisters. Despite the hardship of war, Marjorie’s life as Shona is happy in ways it never was before. But as she makes plans for the future, the question of who she really is haunts her, and at the war’s end she knows she must search for the real Shona and settle the question of her identity.

Margaret J. Anderson was born and educated in Scotland and graduated from the University of Edinburgh with honors in genetics. She worked as a biologist, statistician and wrier in England, Canada and the United States. Her science and nature articles have appeared in many magazines and she is the author of a number of nature books for children. She has also written several biographies of scientists, including Charles Darwin, Carl Linnaeus, and Isaac Newton. Searching for Shona is one of her ten novels published by Knopf. Other fiction books now available as e-books are In the Keep of Time and In the Circle of Time.

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