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Smoke on the Wind by Kelli Estes | GSMC Book Review Podcast

·52 min·3 clips

A burned cottage, a dead man, and a murder accusation force Sordica Chisholm and her son onto the road.

1. GSMC Book Review Podcast interviews Kelly Estes about Smoke on the Wind, a novel that moves between Scotland in 1801 and the present day. 2. Host Sarah introduces Estes as the author of her third published novel and frames the book as an author interview. 3. Estes says the episode is about two women, Kiyoka Denny and Sordica Chisholm, who walk the same path in Scotland centuries apart. 4. She explains that the book mixes historical fiction, contemporary fiction, and a supernatural connection between the timelines. 5. Estes details the Highland Clearances, when landowners in Scotland removed tenants and replaced them with sheep farming. 6. She says Sordica is evicted from her home, a cottage fire breaks out, and a man is killed in the first chapter. 7. Estes adds that Sordica and her son are later wanted for murder and have to keep walking south. 8. She describes Kiyoka and her son Colin hiking the West Highland Way in Scotland before he starts university in Glasgow. 9. Estes says Kiyoka wakes up in a hotel and sees a woman bending over Colin, then begins having visions or dreams that she cannot explain. 10. She says the West Highland Way is 96 miles long and most people walk it in about seven days. 11. Estes says the idea for the supernatural link emerged while she was plotting chapter by chapter rather than from an early decision. 12. She compares this book to earlier novels linked by a Chinese embroidery and a diary. 13. Estes says she believes in ghosts and in the possibility that an imprint of a past person can linger in a place. 14. She says she first learned about the West Highland Way from pictures shared by her literary agent and later hiked it with her son Riley in 2019. 15. Estes says the hike gave her a way to imagine how Sordica and Kiyoka would experience the same land differently in 1801 and in the present. 16. She says reading history books about Scotland led her to places tied to Rob Roy McGregor and Robert the Bruce. 17. Estes says the mother-son relationship matters most in the novel because both timelines involve mothers facing separation from their sons. 18. She describes her writing style as heavily outlined, with a return to page 100 when she often reworks the manuscript after learning more about the characters. 19. Kelly Estes presents the book in an interview style that is reflective, detailed, and process-oriented. 20. Listeners who like Scotland, dual timelines, and historical fiction with a supernatural thread will want this episode, while readers who want a simple straight-ahead plot may skip it.

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