The Scotsman Who Saved Me

The Scotsman Who Saved Me is a 2017 romance novel set in 1860 in the Arkansas Ozarks. Written by Hannah Howell and published by the Zebra Books imprint of the Kensington Publishing Corp., it is the first installment in the Seven Brides for Seven Scotsmen series, which recounts the lives of the MacEnroy brothers, Scottish men who immigrated to the United States in the nineteenth century.

The book opens with Iain MacEnroy and some of his brothers discovering a burned-out cabin with a murdered man and woman inside, along with signs that someone else had fled the scene. They eventually discover an injured Emily Stanton and her three-year-old nephew, Edward (called Neddy), who had fled the attack that left Emily’s sister, Annabel, and her husband, David, dead. Back at the cabin, Emily retrieves some papers from under the floorboards, before she is taken to the homestead, where all seven brothers live and raise sheep. Mary O’Neal, their housekeeper (the widow of an Irishman), tends to Emily’s bullet wound.

Iain and Emily have an instant attraction to each other complicated by his feelings upon discovering her family was English landed gentry, representing the class that drove him and his brothers from Scotland (as part of the Highland Clearances, or the forced evictions spanning the mid-1700s to the mid-1800s). As she recovers, Emily helps with the housekeeping and begins teaching some of the MacEnroys to read.

However, during her first trip to the local trading post, she sees some of the men who attacked their cabin, and a subsequent shootout with the MacEnroys leaves one of them dead. Later, another group of men attacks the MacEnroy homestead, but the brothers, aided by their neighbors the Powells, are able to kill them all. Emily reveals that the ringleader of the gang is likely her father’s first cousin, Albert, who had earlier killed Emily’s parents and followed her and Annabel to America, and that Emily possesses “the deeds to five fine English properties and papers affirming Neddy’s right to all the money that comes with such lands.” She also reveals that Neddy will be a duke when his other grandfather dies.

“With his confused feelings finally sorted out” regarding “Lady Emily Stanton,” Iain realizes what he really wants to do is “to bed Miss Emily Stanton.” Indeed, when the others are away one evening, Iain and Emily do have sex, and she realizes that she loves him. Meanwhile, Albert’s men again attack the MacEnroy homestead. Afterward, Iain’s brothers confront him about his relations with Emily: “Ye are doing this all backwards. Ye should woo her then bed her, nay bed her and then woo her, ye daft fool.”

On a trip to town, Emily sees Albert but manages to hide, but on a later visit, Albert shoots and wounds Iain. While tending to him, Emily writes to the duke. However, not long after, Albert shows up at the MacEnroy house, but as he is narrating all of his deeds to Emily, Iain sneaks up behind him with a broadsword, and Albert’s last words are: “This is funny, is it not. Killed by a Scot with a broadsword in America. The irony of it all.” Iain then tells Emily he wants to marry her. The duke arrives right as they are being wed. In the last chapter, two years later, the duke again arrives in Arkansas, in the midst of the Civil War, this time at the birth of Emily’s daughter, Nuala Isbeal MacEnroy, named after the brothers’ mother.

Like many mass-market, paperback romance novels, The Scotsman Who Saved Me was not widely reviewed. Publishers Weekly, however, described the novel as “badly written, and utterly lacking in tension, passion, or humor,” adding that “Emily is implausibly innocent, and, despite a few indications of potential for becoming spunky, fails to develop into an interesting character.”

For additional information:
Howell, Hannah. The Scotsman Who Saved Me. New York: Kensington Publishing Corp., 2017.

Review of The Scotsman Who Saved Me. Publishers Weekly. https://www.publishersweekly.com/9781420143034 (accessed December 6, 2024).

Staff of the CALS Encylcopedia of Arkansas