ALL WE HOLD DEAR

In this sequel to Too Deep for Tears (1989), a modern-day Scottish heroine searches for her heritage in the diary of a 19th- century ancestor. Eva Crawford lives on Eader Island in the Inner Hebrides with loving parents and a devoted fiancÇ. She's a free spirit who swims naked with dolphins, scampers up cliffsides, and is gifted with the Second Sight. So why is she often taken with dark moods and an ``aching spirit''? What's wrong may be what her parents tell her on her 18th birthday: Eva was adopted; she's actually the biological daughter of Highlander Celia Ward. Finally understanding the cause of her anomie, Eva ferries to Glasgow to discover her past. There, in an ebony Chinese chest, she finds the journal of Celia's great- grandmother Ailsa Rose Sinclair, heroine of Too Deep for Tears. In the earlier book, Ailsa left her soul's mate Ian Fraser to marry Londoner William Sinclair. Here, William has died, and Ailsa returns to her beloved Glen Affric to live with her mother, Mairi, and daughter, Alanna. Like Eva, all three women are clairvoyant, empathic, and pagan, with a special spiritual connection to each other and to their sacred glen. On Alanna's wedding day, her father-in-law promises to bring financial prosperity to the glen in the form of a new hotel. Ian, passionate to keep his home uncorrupted by modern life, kills one of the new investors and takes to the hills with Ailsa. When she is wounded, Ian sacrifices his own life so that Ailsa, pregnant with their baby, can survive. A descendant of that child, Eva embraces her kinswoman's legacy. Free of the ``darkness of wondering,'' she finds her spiritual home and her soul's partner waiting in the glen. A grand mystical romance—though Davis (Sing to Me of Dreams, 1990, etc.) nearly suffocates her narrative in a Scottish bog of overwriting.