‘PHANTOM’S CHILD’: the story

PHANTOM’S CHILD
by Marian Youngblood
ISBN-10: 1453666575
ISBN-13: 978-1453666579
ASIN: 1453666579 (videoformat, Kindle, Blackberry)
British edition (collectible)

A yearning permeates the lives of all the women who populate ‘Phantom’s Child’. Their lives are shaped by an age-old curse which warns that none of them shall see their firstborn son inherit.

When Dame Lillias entered the room, it smelled of roses...

A curse perpetuates through generations of women, from the first Seton wife, Greene Ladye Lillias Drummond, whose husband starved her to death so he could marry again.

Two Aberdeenshire ‘houses’ are interlinked — allowing the curse to continue through two complete lineages. Its consequences are disastrous to both families.

PHANTOM’S CHILD BY MARIAN YOUNGBLOOD
tells the real tale behind Scotland’s past: how generations of women in castles built for kings nourished and guided their families through famine, war and feudal times.

FYVIE CASTLE is the setting for many of the scenes in PHANTOM’S CHILD: ancient legends which grew with the castle tell of women whose eldest son would always die — and that the castle would never pass from father to firstborn son — but would endure and perpetuate through the female line: an ancient tradition of the Pictish princesses who lived there in its first ninth-century stronghold.

Fyvie's Grand Processional Stair - gateway to the towers

An old woman waits: and while she waits she remembers her childhood, the childhood of her own children and her spirit companion, the Greene Ladye of Fyvie, who appears to transport between the houses.

Other legends unfurl: the fated history of the Straloch wedding which ended in fiery disaster — the ongoing saga of the Irvines of Barra — along with the history of the Leith-January family of Fyvie who founded Joliet Steel and bought the castle when it was ruinous to be lived in again. Even Marie Louise January, American wife of Baron Leith is unable to escape the curse. Her eldest son, Percy Forbes Leith, dies of fever.

Being distracted by her husband, taken on a Grand Tour to New York, she is accidentally guided to visit the stained glass workshops of Tiffany’s on Fifth Avenue. There she sees a vision of an angel who must be her son, and is immediately excited to bring her new treasure back home on board the liner the Carpathia, sailing that afternoon back to England.

… the saga continues…

purchase the (US) first edition Phantom’s Child by Marian Youngblood
PHANTOM’S CHILD is also available in Kindle edition on amazon.co.uk and also on the US site, Amazon’s Kindle Store at amazon.com
Collectible, author-signed first edition (paperback) available on amazon’s British site

Phantom’s Child by Marian Youngblood

paperback 272 pp
Publisher: CreateSpace (December 1, 2010)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1453666575
ISBN-13: 978-1453666579
$13.95
ASIN (Kindle edition) 1453666579
$11.48
for British readers: author-signed collectible first edition available on amazon.co.uk site £10.99

The tragic tale of a 300-year old family whose members are haunted by an age-old curse carried through the centuries by an ancient lineage of women. PHANTOM’S CHILD speaks from the depths of Scotland’s lost past. From a hidden corner of northeast Scotland — once the domain of Pictish kings — comes the voice of Lillias, whose legendary form as the Greene Ladye still haunts the halls and great staircases of ancient houses. She reveals a slice of Aberdeenshire’s unwritten history in ruinous castles and forgotten towers where her descendants have borne their unfotunate children, and where, unless Fate’s unkind hand can be stayed, they may be doomed forever to relive her story.

About the Author

Marian Youngblood

Marian Youngblood is a published historian whose special interest is the Pictish lineage of Scotland’s ancient past. Sacred carved boundary marker stones still delineate royal and family landholdings in the landscape of Northeast Scotland and it is here that her fictional stories merge wtih the real unwritten history of Scotland. She lives in Aberdeenshire, grows a garden and communes with ghosts and other spirits.