1. Reader’s Report
Title: Veil of Time
Author: Claire MacDougall
Pages: 313
Reader: Bradon Detwiler
Capsule Summary: An epileptic woman named Maggie discovers she is able to transport
herself back in time to 735 A.D. Dunnad, Scotland whenever she has a seizure. While there, she
falls in love with Fergus, the brother of a Scottish king, and must decide whether or not she will
return to the present or remain there.
Plot Synopsis:
Maggie rents out a cottage at the foot of Dunadd, an ancient fort on the west coast of
Scotland in order to finish a postgraduate thesis on medieval witch burnings. This, however, is
the least of her worries. She’s been recently divorced from a man named Allen, become
increasingly alienated by her son, Graeme, while he attends boarding school in Glasgow, and she
frequently experiences seizures brought on by epilepsy – a condition which was inherited by her
eleven year old daughter, Ellie, and killed her two years prior to the beginning of the novel.
Maggie yearns for a life of equanimity, which she feels has been ruined by the aforementioned
problems.
After arriving at the cottage, however, Maggie begins to have vivid, recurring dreams,
which are induced by her seizures. She imagines going back to 735 A.D – a time in which
Dunadd was a community composed of ancient Scottish and Pictish tribes. She meets Fergus, the
brother of Murdoch, the king of Dunadd. Fergus, like Maggie, has experienced his own
hardships including the death of his wife Saraid. He also has a daughter, Illa, who shares a
striking resemblance to Maggie’s deceased daughter. Maggie, over the course of the novel, falls
in love with Fergus, and finds it increasingly difficult to wake up, or to “return”, to her real life
as she becomes more and more absorbed in this dream world.

2. She soon discovers, however, that these dreams aren’t merely dreams, but a portal that
transfers her back in time and that her interactions could have real and lasting consequences on
the course of history as well as her own life. Things are made all the more complicated when
Maggie, in researching for her thesis, discovers that 735 A.D. also happens to be the start of a
devastating series of events for the Scots including a catastrophic earthquake, a Pictish invasion
of Dunadd, and the arrival of the Vikings. Maggie, along with the help of her neighbor and local
historian Jim Galvin, makes it her mission to help Fergus and his people avoid these events. But
with an impending lobotomy which has the potential to cure her epilepsy, she isn’t sure whether
or not she will make it in time to help them or, depending on the success of the operation,
whether she will ever be able to return to 735 A.D.
Maggie, with the help of a druid named Sula, is able to warn of the coming events and
safely moves Fergus and townspeople out of Dunadd to Loch Glashan where they will eventually
move on to an ancestral town named Scone. All of this happens, however, when Maggie is in
surgery and when Maggie finally comes to by the end of the novel, she comes to this conclusion:
“Fergus and Illa weren’t there anymore. One day perhaps they might come back. And when they
did, one day, perhaps the woman [Maggie] might find them [in Dunadd],” (313).
Evaluation
The novel’s strongest suit is the premise of the story itself. Using seizures as a conduit to
a distant time was an interesting conceit and there was something very compelling about two
souls finding each other by breaking the space-time continuum. It captures the cosmic and
transcendent experience of falling in love in a way that’s sometimes hard to articulate in novels.

3. The writer also did a good job of handholding the reader, so to speak, through the
historical aspects of the novel. Since half the story takes place in 735 A.D. Scotland, it would be
safe to assume that most readers wouldn’t know too much about that place during that time
period. MacDougall, however, provides us with enough historical background so that we as
readers become more invested in the novel without having it overshadowing the story. There
were, however, weaknesses in several vital aspects of the novel that could use revisiting by the
writer.
Characterization
The depictions of the characters, particularly Maggie, seemed somewhat underdeveloped
and inconsistent. From the beginning of the novel, we gather that Maggie is dissatisfied with her
life, leaving her an emotionally vulnerable woman given all the hardships she has had to endure.
Because of this, she tends to put up a bit of a defense when it comes to sharing her thoughts, not
only with other characters but also with the reader. This is especially problematic considering it
defeats the purpose of a first person narration, which is to give us insight into the interiority of a
character. Whenever she does try to articulate her existential hang-ups, it often comes out as a
flaccid cliché. For example, towards the end of the novel, Maggie discusses her dilemma with
Jim Galvin on whether or not she should return to her waking life: “But what would I have
instead? A son instead of a daughter, a thesis about witches instead of a real one? A gaping hole
instead of Fergus,” (278).
In addition to this, Maggie seemed ideologically inconsistent in parts of the book,
particularly in regards to her feminism – a problem considering that it serves as a thematic
underpinning. For example, she declares on page 118: “I’m not in the business of being a

4. feminist, at least not a ball busting one.” Given, however, that her postgraduate education is
focused on Women’s Studies (not to mention her repeated defenses of the female druids against
the misogynistic tyranny of the church), this doesn’t really seem in keeping with her beliefs. One
could argue that her attraction to Fergus stems not only from a wish to escape the harsh realities
of her present, but also from an admiration of pagan Gaelic culture to regard women as strong
and independent. She also laughs at an off-putting joke that Jim makes when they are discussing
her being anesthetized during surgery wherein he would “have [his] with her she wasn’t looking,
(275).” Given Jim’s obvious attraction to Maggie, one would think that this comment would
come off as inappropriate to Maggie (or anybody).
Another character that lacks depth is Jim. Although he does exhibit a desire to be with
Maggie (and in doing attempts to give the novel more romantic intrigue), this isn’t fully fleshed
out. At times, Maggie doesn’t seem to show that much interest in him, and at one point, rejects
him flat out. Towards the end of the novel, however, she brings him to her parents’ house and
leads her son and ex-husband to believe that there is a relationship forming between them. Their
passion, if it does exist, is tepid and we aren’t really rooting for them to end up together in the
end. If anything, the reader gathers that Jim exists in the story not so as much as character in his
own right, but as a mouthpiece for conveying historical information.
Language/Voice
There were a couple of instances of beautiful prose and insight. On page 157, Maggie is
contemplating the landscape which then turns into a meditation on history and time:
“The brow of the hill is cold and windy. The one remaining segment of Sula’s
wall does nothing to block the elements. Out beyond the fort, the sea, which the
tide has taken out even further than usual, harbours everything it ever knew and
kept secret. None of the peaks and valleys between hills has changed since Fergus

5. and his people. But they are not telling either. Real history, the part that is not
written down, is mum. No matter if time is a long thread running into a vanishing
horizon or a mass of simultaneously moving circles, nothing is being said tonight
or any night.”
These moments, however, are few and far between. A lot of the prose tends to be
somewhat stilted and contrived at times, especially towards the beginning. For example, Maggie
has a conversation with Jim in which they discuss their past family lives. When she senses that
she is touching on a sore subject, Maggie thinks, “The question of the children hangs in the
pause, so I resort to an expediency well honed by humans: I change the subject,” (10). Even for a
woman who was once married to an esteemed scholar and is in her own right an academic, this is
much too clinical.
The prose also tends to stagnate when the focus turns to Dunadd in 735 A.D. Although the
author attempts to capture the speech patterns of an ancient Scottish society via the English
translations, it doesn’t make for smooth reading. For example, on pages 20-21:
“Still, Fergus had taken his wife from the Picts and his daughter, rust in hair and
light of eyes, long-legged like her mother, was more Pict than Scot, a stark
contrast to the dark-eyed pale-skinned children Murdoch spawned. For the Scots
came down from Scotta, a dark princess who had sailed across seas to Erin from a
land far off to the East. It was she who had brought the sacred stone that those
Scots had in turn brought from Erin to this land two hundred years ago. Gaels, the
Picts called those sailors from Erin.”
This liberal use of passive voice that slows down the reader initially, however, over time, one
can adjust to the style of writing. Also, the dialogue between Jim and Maggie takes on a specific
Scottish cadence that took a while to get used to. Some of it may need to be toned down in order
to appeal to markets outside of Scotland. That being said, the writer should be commended for
her use of various antiquated languages (Gaelic, Latin, and Saxon) while managing to never lose
the reader. It gives the novel a verisimilitude and an interesting insight into past cultures.

6. Plot/Narrative Structure
Due the psycho-time travel that takes place in this novel, the narrative structure is
ostensibly complex yet somewhat hazy at times because we are given various points of view
during different times in history. One perspective we get is Maggie’s, which oscillates between
modern times and 735 A.D. whenever she has a dream. We also get a third person limited
narrator that tends toward a free indirect discourse when it comes to conveying Fergus’ thoughts.
The internal logic of this time travel is never explicitly stated for a good portion of the novel
until page 196 when Jim and Maggie talk about Einstein’s theory of relativity as an explanation
for the seemingly impossible, metaphysical phenomenon that is taking place. This is explained
much too late in the novel, and even then it doesn’t really contribute to the reader’s
understanding of the story’s internal logic. As far-fetched as the mechanics of the time travel
may seem, we’ve already suspended our disbelief by the time the writer comes around to
explaining its plausibility.
There are two main conflicts in the story. One has to do with whether Maggie’s internal
struggles can be resolved, particularly by staying in the imagined past with Fergus as a means of
alleviating the vague existential pang she feels. There is also the dilemma of saving Fergus and
his people from catastrophe and whether or not such an event would alter the course of history.
The resolution to these problems are essentially open-ended but in a satisfying way. The
conclusion inspires mystery rather than an indictment of coping out.
Commercial Viability
Although this manuscript needs some editorial work, I think the storyline itself would
appeal to several niche markets with its blend of historical and romance fiction. The book can be

7. marketed as a cross between The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger and the Outlander
series by Diana Gabaldon.