Wee Gillis

Wee Gillis lives in Scotland. He is an orphan, and he spends half of each year with his mother’s people in the Lowlands, while the other half finds him in the Highlands with his father’s kin. Both sides of Gillis’s family are eager for him to settle down and adopt their ways. In the Lowlands, he is taught to herd cattle, learning how to call them to him in even the heaviest of evening fogs. In the rocky Highlands, he stalks stags from outcrop to outcrop, holding his breath so as not to make a sound. Wee Gillis is a quick study, and he soon picks up what his elders can teach him. And yet he is unprepared when the day comes for him to decide, once and for all, whether it will be the Lowlands or the Highlands that he will call his home. As he stands between his yelling uncles, he can’t decide which way of life he will make his own.

Unexpectedly, the skills he learned from both sides of the family help Wee Gillis find a solution that satisfies both sides of the family in a way that nobody – not even Wee Gillis himself – could have predicted.