The Devil's Pulpit & Other Mostly True Scottish Misadventures

On the heels of a global pandemic, two post-menopausal Appalachian women, one black, one white, abandoned hearth, home, and spouses shrugging in dubious wonderment to live and study abroad together in a university fiat along Scotland's River Ayr. Poet E.J. Wade and author Karen Spears Zacharias roamed from the depths of Finnich Glen to the outcroppings of Dunure Castle. Sometimes wishing they'd been raised by Buddhist Monks instead of by foul-mouthed chain-smoking Appalachian mothers, these two University of the West of Scotland grad students embraced the wandering spirits of their matriarchal ancestors and left no ScotRail ticket unused. In Glasgow's Sloans Ballroom, as musicians reimagined the compositions of writer and abolitionist Ignatius Sancho, they danced a cèilidh. Along Edinburgh's High Street, Wade performed a salsa. Hiking past windsurfers and golfers, they went in search of fairies and unearthed magical moments. They snuzzled Highland coos in Stranraer and stood gap-mouthed before the Falkirk Kelpies. The Devil's Pulpit & Other Mostly True Scottish Misadventures is part travelogue, part memoir, part poetry, and in outlandish Scottish storytelling tradition, a wee bit of winging it. Somewhere along Scotland's northernmost tip to its southernmost brigs, they forged a friendship that defies generations of racial animosity. At its heart, this collection is the rediscovery of friendships first formed through studying and mucking about.