One ordinary day in the spring of 2003, Carole Hoey was washing dishes at the kitchen sink when a sound, or rather a sudden absence of sound, caused her to glance out the window. She had lived here, on the land between the lochs, for six years, and she had become used to the view, Orkney’s everyday miracle: the hills of Hoy, the waters of Stenness and Harray, and, just up the road, the Ring of Brodgar—Scotland’s biggest stone circle.
What snagged her attention was the realization that she could no longer hear the tractor. It had been passing up and down, plowing a field belonging to her neighbors, preparing for the sowing of wildflowers in ground that, for years, had been given over to barley. Hoey didn’t yet know…