The tattered brown diary mysteriously appears on the food table at Clara Campbell Macrae's funeral. Clara's daughter, Margaret Rose, struggles to read the diary's archaic language hoping to inherit a bit of the courage of its author, believed to be her 18th century ancestor, Ewan Macrae, who journeyed across the ocean to the Americas fleeing the slaughter of Highlanders following the Battle of Culloden. Margaret struggles to overcome years of abuse by her mother, the suspicion that she killed the woman, the mystery of her father's disappearance and her own heritage. She is also looking for clues as to who owns a valuable piece of land she has been warned against claiming before it is developed into a chemical complex. Can the diary possibly deliver? For help, she turns to the only people she knows - an unlikely bunch of misfits and outsiders. You may be surprised what can be accomplished by a jaded New York City writer, a little old lady who may be a Celtic priestess, a police chief who handcrafts fine furniture, and a young Cherokee boy on a quest.