It wasn't by chance. There wasn't a part of it that happened by chance.

Carolyn McClelland, a writer of historical novels, finds herself with a familiar enemy; writer's block. A change of scenery leads her, and her book, in a whole new direction. Writing about the attempted Jacobite invasion of 1707, Carolyn takes up residence in a cottage in Edinburgh. Inexplicably drawn to Slains Castle, and not so inexplicably drawn to the charming, but somehow familiar, Stuart Keith, Carolyn is soon writing with an unusual speed and imagery which leads her to wonder whether her 'fictional' character of Sophia is really so fictional after all.

Carolyn soon realises that she is somehow channelling the memories of her distant relative and that her story has a life of its own.