Whispers in the Glen – guest post by Sue Lawrence

Posted on June 2, 2025

The location of Whispers in the Glen, Glen Clova, some 30 miles north of my home town of Dundee, has been my family’s favourite glen for decades. My dad and uncle often used to get the bus to Kirriemuir then cycle some 14 miles to the Glen Clova youth hostel, in their teens.

They climbed the two munros – Mayar and Dreish – and skied on old-fashioned wooden skis around Tolmount to the north west of Clova, where heavy snow falls are commonplace in winter. There were, of course, no chairlifts in those days – just a hard slog tramping to the top through deep snow, skis on shoulders.

My own family now visit Clova to climb the mountains, or just walk up to Loch Brandy, from the back of the hotel, where my extended family stay for family picnics, hikes, climbs – and even memorial services: my mountaineering uncle’s ashes are scattered at the summit of Dreish, the munro to the west of the glen.

When I found out a couple of years ago about Jean Cameron, the Clova postwoman in WW2 who refused to wear the regulation uniform skirt since she had to cycle for miles, clamber over fences and wade through streams, I couldn’t get her out of my head: what a woman! Because of her, all rural posties throughout Britain were then given uniform trousers, called ‘Camerons’. I just knew that one of my characters had to have a similar job, as postie in Glen Clova.

I then found out about the crash of a Wellington bomber in August 1942 in the hills above Glen Clova. There was one survivor and local tales still vary about how he got down the mountain in the dark, and where he ended up, but that is when fiction takes over from historical fact.

There is also inspiration in the story from WW1. Early on in the novel, Nell, one of two sisters who are the main characters, worked as ambulance driver in Royaumont Abbey, near Paris. This was one of the many Scottish Women’s Hospitals set up by Dr Elsie Inglis, employing only women doctors, nurses and orderlies. Out of the 8,752 soldiers registered there as patients, there were only 159 deaths, a remarkably low figure considering the dreadful circumstances.

Whispers in the Glen is about mysteries hidden over the years between the two sisters, Nell and Effie. Between the two world wars, these hidden secrets slowly come to the surface and then a stranger arrives in the glen, in 1943. Things begin to unravel because of the young French woman’s presence. There are whispers all through the glen…

Glen Clova is not merely a location in the narrative, it harbours mysteries, it evokes feelings so strong there are irrevocable consequences. The distance created between the sisters because of age-old lies and misunderstandings must be removed. As well as a French stranger, there is also the crash survivor, whose pocket contains a photo that kickstarts the unravelling of the past. In the glen, wrongs from the past fester, but it becomes a place of retribution, a place of legend.

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Whispers in the Glen publishes on the 5th June 2025.

Sue Lawrence is the author of several historical thrillers that cast fascinating light on the perils and injustice that characterised women’s lives in Scotland through centuries past – whether born into penniless or powerful families: Lady’s Rock, The Green Lady, The Unreliable Death of Lady Grange, Down to the Sea, The Night He Left and Fields of Blue Flax. She is also one of the UK’s leading cookery writers and broadcasters. Having trained as a journalist, she won BBC’s MasterChef in 1991 and became a food writer, Cookery Editor of The Sunday Times and a regular contributor to Scotland on Sunday. Born in Dundee, she was raised in Edinburgh, where she now lives.