Valerie Nieman’s upcoming novel *Upon the Corner of the Moon* will be available on March 11th

I was an Appalachian writer before I was a Southern writer. People will say that authors from these regions share a strong sense of place, a deep relationship with the land and the people, which shows in their work. That was true enough for all my previous writing from the first poem to my most recently published novel.

But with Upon the Corner of the Moon, I was writing about Scotland. And not a Scotland easily accessible through movies and popular fiction, but Alba of the 11th century. A thousand years ago. The age of the Vikings. The age of Macbeth.

The first of two books, Upon the Corner of the Moon tells the story of the young Macbeth and Gruach, imagining them within the known historical record as they survive dynastic struggles to meet, marry, and claim their legacies. The second book, The Last Highland King, tells of Macbeth’s rightful accession to the throne and 17-year reign, against a backdrop of political and religious turmoil.

After years of studying the period through books gathered through interlibrary loan and bookstores, I felt that I didn’t know Scotland – not in that intimate way, with a direct knowledge of the birds and plants, the weather and soil. I decided that I must have “boots on the ground” if I was to accurately reflect the spectacular landscapes where my story unfolds.

I decided to spend a month hiking, especially the Highlands and northeast, seeking out locations in Moray and beyond that featured in the book. I’d never in my life done a through-hike, or even a hike of more than 10 miles, but as I said (flippantly) “I’ll never be 59 again.”

I trained for some weeks, putting gallons of water in my backpack and humping along trails in the humid North Carolina summertime. With a barely broken-in pair of Ecco trainers and a carefully stuffed Osprey weekender backpack tipping the airport scales at 16 pounds, I headed to Glasgow, ready or not.

The first part of my journey would be hiking the Great Glen Way (GGW), which follows the great rift-lakes of Lochy and Oich and Ness, 77 miles from the Atlantic Ocean to the North Sea. I bought hiking poles and a multifunction knife in Fort William and did a last check of the Walk Highlands website for up-to-the-minute news on the route. I’d booked a room at a B&B ten miles away, and the only way I was getting to a bed that night was with my own two feet.

The GGW was the start of a Highland adventure that was often exhausting, sometimes a bit frightening—as when an area closed by timbering meant a rough descent on a temporary bypass and equally steep climb to rejoin the trail past the forestry—and always exhilarating. I covered the distance in five days, with the longest section 21 miles. I ate delicious spring lamb in Fort Augustus, walked through bluebells and primrose, learned about forgotten races of island ponies, breathed the tropical scent of gorse in bloom, and made the long descent into Inverness with my calves cramping and shuddering.

It was marvelous!

What I came for, however, were the sharp details of the land noted in my journal and photographed as well, and the observations I gathered from people met along the way. My years as a journalist have made me both curious and bold enough to talk with strangers. Those encounters were precious, from the woman in the Post who advised me to drink from St. Aethan’s Well, to the ferryman who pointed out Fingal’s Dogstone, to the biker who’d seen the Brocken Specter and had much to say about Macbeth.

That trip also took me to the Tay Valley and Birnam Wood, where the oaks, while ancient and propped up with crutches, are not so old as the reign of King Macbeth nor do they walk, and to Macbeth’s burial site in the mound of kings on Iona. I miscalculated the returning tide while walking the beach to Findhorn. I saw lapwings in their nesting grounds on the furthest Orkney island. Always, I was looking through a scrim of the present to see what was timeless, what remained of the past.

J.R.R. Tolkien tells us that “roads go ever ever on,” leading us to unexpected vistas. As much as we might study and read and plan, I think it’s the unanticipated turns that make the whole process of writing historical fiction so magical. You don’t know what you don’t know, as I found out when I learned that the forests I walked through in Scotland are not those that the Macbeths would have known. The great Caledonian woods were cut down and partly replaced with Sitka spruce and Douglas fir, orderly plantations of North American trees. I’m humbly aware there is so much that I still don’t know—but I will keep looking.

When I returned in 2023, I spent time in Edinburgh and Aberdeen and the Royal Deeside. Climbed a thousand-year-old round tower in Abernethy. Visited the reputed site of Macbeth’s last battle. So much more, so many memories! As a writer, I draw on all the material I have gathered over the 30 years that these books have incubated, much of it seemingly forgotten, but it rises to the surface as I write. Sometimes things just “feel right” and when I check, it turns out the brain has done its wondrous work.

In this “time after the pandemic” we’ve become accustomed to Zoom conversations and virtual tours, which can be entertaining and even extremely helpful. But there’s no substitute, I think, to standing at the Ring of Brodgar, battered by the wind off the North Sea as I pondered ancient goddess religions, or coming upon a shieling along the Great Glen Way. That rough shelter, a shallow cave enclosed with stones such as shepherds would have made, found its way into Upon the Corner of the Moon as a refuge for the young Duncan and Macbeth. Likewise the brochs of Orkney and the ruins of Dunollie became part of the story.

Later this year, I’m going back. The Last Highland King summons me to visit Stirling and the Kingdom of Fife and the Borders and York, so that revisions to that second book, not yet completed at this writing, will be anchored in the soils of its setting as surely as the great Scots pines.

Perhaps I could have written these books without “boots on the ground,” but the writing would not have been so rich. Nor nearly so much fun.