"Bernie slowly clambered up the slope and over the rocks on which she and her friends had often played. There seemed no danger as she made her way over towards a steep grassy bank which took her up to another ledge. But what none of them could see was the series of eroded, sloping rocks that lay beyond the next bank. Bernie was barefooted and wearing her usual tattered clothes."
Set on a tiny Scottish island in the early nineteenth century, The Seal of Promise tells the story of two young people from contrasting family backgrounds - he the wealthy laird's younger son, she a penniless crofter's daughter. Close friends as children at the island's little school, they are separated later by the British class system until eventually united by the revelation of a secret discovery they had made together as children. Little had they realised how significant that discovery might be, not only for their own lives but potentially for the nation as a whole.