The structure of the novel is such that the first-person narrator flips between the “witch” telling her story and the reverend writing to his wife. Au début j’ai eu un peu de mal à rentrer dans l’histoire mais au fur et à mesure j’ai été envoûtée ensorcelée par la lecture. Yet Fletcher has weaved the sentiment into her story in a way (mostly) that endeared her characters to me.

Scottish folklore tells of a Highland witch named Corrag who tried to warn the MacDonald Clan about the impending British attack, but many did not believe her and were killed. Fletcher sets up the novel with alternating chapters told by Corrag, a young woman accused of witchcraft: "I wait for it - death. Her prose is extraordinarily lyrical: haunted, dreamlike and precise, reminiscent at times of Sylvia Plath…Fletcher's words are undeniably beautiful and her themes are profound…a haunting novel.Her only audience was a reverend of Christian faith, whose motive was initially to obtain an eyewitness account for political purposes. No spoilers of her life in Glencoe prior to ending up in the cell; little by little the strange little woman insinuates herself into the close MacDonald clan. The era of witch-hunts is coming to an end – but Charles Leslie, an Irish propagandist and Jacobite, hears of the Massacre and, keen to publicise it, comes to the tollbooth to question her on the events of that night, and the weeks preceding it.

This beauty is eventually destroyed by the massacre of the MacDonalds at the hands of the soldiers, their own guests. S. history so am in no position to discuss the accuracy of Fletcher's "historical" fiction; it is a genre I don't tend to read. Charles is hoping to gain evidence that will prove that King William was involved in the Murder/Massacre so that King James could be reinstated. Set in the Highlands of Scotland, 1692, the title character Corrag has been branded a witch for warning the MacDonalds of Glencoe of an impending massacre.He has heard of the witch in her cell and that she knew what had happened in the Highlands, so as much as it appalled him as a man of God to speak with a witch, speak with her he must. She tells her story to Charles, who believes at first she should be executed, but as Corrag tells her story. Though we now tend to use “witch” as a catch-all term when referring to women with powers, it should be noted that the traditional wise woman aimed to help her community and ward off negative influences: finding lost items or animals, foretelling of death, diagnosing and healing ailments etc. From the bed of dirty straw in her tiny cell known as a "tollbooth," Corrag tells her story to daily visitor Reverend Leslie, who is there to gather information on the massacre.