When Canadian widow and harpist Angel Dawn Marie Buchan wakes up after turning forty to realize that her dreams in life are slipping away, she decides to seize the moment, cast caution to the wind, and launch out on the adventure she and her husband always talked about.

She sets out for Scotland with her small travel harp having no idea what she is in for. Not only does she fall in love with an isolated stretch of coastline in northern Scotland, she also finds herself swept into a local mystery and the last thing she ever expected—a love triangle. And she is right in the middle of it!

From the opening to Angel Harp:

It is a terrible thing when dreams die. I haven’t cherished many dreams in my life. Maybe women don’t like men do. My dreams were quiet and personal. I usually thought of myself as a relatively simple person. I didn’t care about changing the world or being rich, or even for that matter having a fancy home.

I could have been content most anywhere. There were a few things I had dreamed of. I had dreamed of being loved by a good and worthy man, and loving him in return. I had dreamed of having children and raising them and loving them and being loved by them. I had dreamed of growing old with my husband and watching our sons and daughters mature and blossom and raise children of their own. But one by one those dreams had been taken from me. My husband was gone now. The circumstances aren’t important. At least I don’t want to dwell on them. They’re too painful.

Suffice it to say he is gone. We had planned to have children, of course, but kept putting it off. First it was the money problems of newlyweds…thinking we needed a bigger house before starting a family…my husband’s career…my own part-time work. Suddenly years slip by. My husband died and there were no children. I wasn’t particularly old when I found myself alone, only thirty-four. Not even past my prime, as they say. But it’s old enough to feel old if it comes before you’re ready for it. My friends told me I needed to get out, to see people, to start “dating” again. What a horrible thought! I could hardly imagine it.

Good heavens, I already had a gray hair or two. My hair was either dark blond or light brown, whatever you want to call it, so it hid the occasional grayish strand pretty well. But I knew they were there. I also knew what they meant—that the clock of life kept ticking and I wasn’t a teenager anymore. It isn’t as if a single woman, a “widow”—Gosh, what a thing to call myself at thirty-four!—can just snap her fingers and suddenly find a line of eligible, successful, sensitive, handsome, nice men in their mid to late thirties lining up at her door. It doesn’t happen that way. I had never considered myself that good looking. I know men judge differently, but when I looked in the mirror I couldn’t rate my looks at more than three and a half or four. Maybe four and a half. And when did four and a half turn heads? Ten is the standard in our world.

I’m not exactly sure how the next few years passed. If time flies when you’re having fun, it somehow also goes by when you’re not. Turning forty didn’t exactly wake me out of my lethargy. At first it just stunned me. Forty! Good heavens…am I really forty, I thought. At first I became dreadfully depressed. If ever I’d had the chance to marry again, I had just wasted half my thirties doing nothing about it. Gradually that phase faded. Then I went through a period trying to deal with it by forcing myself to look the hard cold facts in the eye and accept them like a grown-up and quit being a crybaby. Every day I told myself, “You are forty, you are a widow, you are middle-aged, you have more gray than you can safely keep plucking out, you are going to live the rest of your life alone. Deal with it.”

A day came I’ll never forget. It was a non-descript Sunday in November—gray, threatening rain, cold, dreary. I had nothing to do, nowhere to go. I saw nobody. As dusk began to fall about five-thirty that afternoon, I realized the whole day had gone by and I’d not seen another soul. I was sitting on the couch of my living room, and from out of nowhere I just started to cry. For no reason…I just began to cry.

The sad truth had finally hit home that I was lonely. I was alone in the world, and I was lonely…and it felt awful. I cried myself to sleep on the couch, woke up about ten in pitch black, cold and hungry, and dragged myself to bed. A week or two later I had a dream. I mean an actual dream. I think my husband was the focus of it but I can’t remember.

I woke up crying again. The words were ringing in my head, “Don’t let me die…don’t let me die.” Gradually I realized that it wasn’t my husband speaking at all. It was the dream itself. The dream was saying, “Don’t let me die.”

New beginnings start one step at a time. The day after my dream I made a decision. That sounds like a small thing. In fact, it’s the most important thing in life anyone ever does. Making decisions is hard. You have to summon something from deep inside that…well, that takes courage in a way.

My decision was this: I decided that on that day I would take one step toward one dream. I determined that I would dream again.

One of the “dreams” my husband and I had shared was to take a sabbatical and make an extended visit to Ireland or Scotland or Wales, Britain’s three Celtic regions. Maybe all three. It was a dream that hadn’t evaporated completely. I had not thought of going to the islands and highlands of Britain in years.

But after my dream, it all came back. Even if nothing came of it, just being reminded of that mental vision was invigorating. So why not actually do something like that? I wasn’t too old to travel for heaven’s sake, to see more of the world. What was stopping me?