Anne is a healer among her clan. Some call her a witch. Her clan is in an ongoing feud with a neighboring clan, the Campbells. After Anne sneaks out to help with a birth, she runs into the tanist of the Campbells, but doesn't know it at the time. One of his clansmen accuses Anne of being a witch and she is saved by the stranger.
Niall is making sure that things are running smoothly since his father has been ill for a long time. Someone wants to get him out of the way, presumably to take over leadership of the clan for himself. Niall is betrayed and becomes a prisoner of Anne's people. They are not allowed to kill him, however, since Anne stands up for him and owes him her life.
Eventually these two are handfasted, a kind of trial marriage, although Anne insists that it is a chaste handfasting. She meets a lot of hostility at Niall's home, basically from almost all of the family. The one friend that she has in the family, Iain, is one of the men suspected of betrayal and he also doesn't hide the fact that he is smitten with Anne, so that causes a rift between Anne and Niall.
As I mentioned before, these people go through a lot. There were witch burnings, attempted drownings, assaults, poisonings, kidnappings, traitors...I was bummed that they had to endure so much, but I can't fault the author for writing a good book. I had a hard time putting it down at the end. I'm not big into the clan books, the whole "och" and "lassie" thing grates on me after a time. There are two more in this series, Wings of Morning and A Fire Within. If they came up free, I would pick the up, but I don't plan on tracking them. Regardless, this one will get my stamp of "Good Book!"
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