Loni Ford is a successful career woman in Washington D.C. She knows little about her roots. Raised by her conservative Quaker grandparents, she has done her best to leave the trappings of her upbringing—so backward in her eyes as to be almost Amish-like—behind.

She loves her grandmother and grandfather, but theirs is not the life for her. She knows almost nothing about her parents other than that they were killed in an automobile accident. She especially has no inkling of her mother’s Scottish ancestry.

When a mysterious letter arrives at her office, postmarked from a solicitor in the Shetland Islands, she has no idea what it could be about. Learning that she has inherited a cottage and must travel to the islands in the middle of the North Sea to take possession, her only thought was to sell the place and be done with it. She does not anticipate being thrown into the middle of a hornet’s nest of controversy over the disputed inheritance.

She arrives in Whales Reef to find the whole village up in arms about the interloping American who has stolen the inheritance from the rightful heir, the man she learns to be her own third cousin David Tulloch.

From the opening to The Inheritance, Book 1 in “Secrets of the Shetlands”:

Pensive reflections can be dangerous to your health. Especially for one trying to leave the past behind. A smartly dressed woman of about thirty stood looking down on a corner of D.C.’s famous Mall. It was nothing like the view commanded by the corner office of her boss, who, in her leisure moments gazed out on the Washington Monument, the Capitol Dome, and the White House in the distance. But hey, she thought, at least she had a window. Not bad for a country girl. And an office of her own!

She had never dreamed of occupying more than a cubicle in a dingy back room of some small business in Podunk, U.S.A. That’s all a pencil-pusher like her could hope for. People from her family didn’t go to college, especially not university. She knew she had been lucky just to get past junior college. Everything changed when Madison Swift bounded with all her energy and dynamism into her life. Now here she was looking out from a modern high rise office complex in what was arguably the most important city in the world. At least in the political world.

Why, then, did unwelcome waves of disquiet sweep over her at the most inconvenient times? Loni never knew when they might strike. Uncomfortable memories out of the past. This morning, on her way across the Mall, it was a tourist family gazing up at the Monument. She recognized them instantly. She didn’t know them, but she knew them. For one like her, the signs of religious conservatism were unmistakable. The long dresses, the bonnets and beards and wide-brimmed hats, the flock of compliant children, exact replicas of their parents, trailing behind. Mennonite, Brethren, Pentecostal…it didn’t matter. They always sent her thoughts in the same directions.

They were ubiquitous reminders of her grandparents’ plain dress and antiquated ways. Such reminders and the questions they raised—she could never put her finger on it—oddly almost made her homesick…but with a longing for a home she had never known. Sometimes the yearning in her heart became so strong she felt its ache inside. But she couldn’t go back. She had no desire to return to that life. The home she yearned for wasn’t back there anyway. Where was it? Maybe that was what part of her was still trying to figure out.

And later in the story…

Loni Ford was sitting in Madison Swift’s office when the mail cart began its rounds on the seventh floor of Capital Towers. A minute later she absently began thumbing through the envelopes. “Anything interesting?” said Maddy. “Doesn’t look like it. I was expecting those papers on the Westminster acquisition and—“ She stopped abruptly.

“Huh!” exclaimed Loni. “Here’s a letter for me. I never get mail here.—Uh oh…it’s from a lawyer’s office.” She passed the letter across the desk to Maddy. “You look at it,” she said with a serious expression. “It must be bad news. One of my grandparents must have died. What else comes from a lawyer—a summons, a lawsuit…obviously it’s bad news.”

“Since when have you been using your middle name?” said Maddy, staring at the envelope. “I never even knew what your middle name was.” “What are you talking about?” replied Loni. “I don’t use my middle name.” “Whoever this letter is from—they think you do. Alonnah Tulloch Ford.” “Tulloch?” repeated Loni. “I had a grandfather named Tulloch. I never met him.” Maddy continued to peruse the envelope. “The name isn’t the only unusual thing,” she said. This letter was mailed from Scotland.” “Scotland! Open it and see what it says. If it’s bad news, I prefer to hear it second hand.” Maddy slit the envelope and pulled out a single sheet of paper.

Loni watched as her boss’s eyes widened and her eyebrows arched. The next moment she let out a whispered, Whoa! You’d better sit down for this.” “I am sitting down! Tell me what it says.” “Okay, but you’re not going to believe it—according to this, some fellow in Scotland died. You’ve inherited his house.” “You’ve got to be kidding!” “That’s what it says—actually, this letter calls it a cottage.”