Two Appalachian women set off for Scotland with more questions than answers — and came home with stories stitched in laughter, rain, ghosts, and sisterhood.
They weren’t there to find love. Not the romantic kind, anyway. But Karen Spears Zacharias and E.J. Wade — both in the thick of post-menopause, both weary of pandemic silence, and both very much finished with anyone telling them who they ought to be — ended up finding something maybe even rarer: a friendship so profound it made the foggy Scottish highlands feel like home.
And now, Zacharias is sharing their story — or at least, the mostly true parts of it — in her latest book The Devil’s Pulpit & Other Mostly True Scottish Misadventures, which she’ll present on May 15 at Paulina Springs Books in Sisters, Oregon.
The Highlands, Heartache, and Hysterics
Zacharias and Wade’s escapade wasn’t a guided tour or a neat semester abroad.
They packed up real lives, left husbands shaking their heads back home, and moved into a modest university flat along the River Ayr. It wasn’t a sabbatical. It was a kind of rebellion.
One white. One Black. One a poet. One a prose writer. Together, they were armed with anthropological instincts, sharp tongues, and a shared yearning to unearth family ghosts and cultural bones.
Some days, they roamed from castle ruins to kelpie sculptures. Other days, they just tried not to kill each other in the shared kitchen.
At Finnich Glen — a moss-covered chasm as eerie as it is cinematic — they imagined devils and daughters long gone. At Dunure Castle, they chased wind and silence. Each trip brought them closer to something neither had quite expected: peace.
Where Myth Meets Motherhood
It’s not a traditional travel book. Not really a memoir either. And if you ask Zacharias, it wasn’t supposed to be anything other than notes and nonsense. But poetry crept in. And memory. And a fierce tenderness that neither woman could fully explain.
Sometimes, they joked about being raised by wolves. Other times, they said Buddhist monks would’ve done a better job than their Appalachian mamas. That kind of gallows humor floats through the book — sharp, funny, and full of bite.
And somehow, it always circles back to the women who came before them.
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Wade, with her lyrical voice and Southern cadence, traces a lineage shaped by slavery and song.
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Zacharias, whose writing has long centered on justice and women’s voices, brings an eye for the overlooked.
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Both studied at the University of the West of Scotland, where they swapped textbooks and tea in equal measure.
Their matriarchs weren’t gentle. But neither are the hills of Ayrshire. That’s the point.
Ceilidhs, Salsa, and Fairy Hunts
The book — and the misadventures that birthed it — don’t flinch from joy.
At Glasgow’s Sloans Ballroom, they stomped through a cèilidh while musicians reimagined the works of abolitionist Ignatius Sancho. In Edinburgh, Wade danced a salsa right in the middle of the High Street — unapologetic, barefoot, and laughing.
And they chased legends too.
In Stranraer, they nuzzled Highland coos. In Falkirk, they stared up at the giant kelpie statues like schoolgirls at a pop concert. Somewhere between the top of Scotland and the bottom, they stopped chasing myths and started believing in their own magic.
Then again, they also lost keys, argued over train timetables, and drank awful instant coffee. Real life, in other words.
Here’s a glimpse of where they went:
| Location | Memory Made |
|---|---|
| Finnich Glen | Imagined devils, debated God and grief |
| Dunure Castle | Windy silence and ancestral whispers |
| Sloans Ballroom | Danced with history in ceilidh form |
| Edinburgh | Salsa on stone, poetry on the pavement |
| Stranraer | Highland coos, laughter, and a near-escapee |
| Falkirk | Awe-struck by the towering metal kelpies |
No Map for This Kind of Thing
Friendship like theirs doesn’t follow GPS.
They bickered like sisters, cried like strangers, and stood united when locals mistook them for anything other than what they were — two aging American women with fire in their bones.
There’s one moment Zacharias writes about: Wade, half-drenched from a coastal walk, looked at her and said, “We don’t have to understand this. We just have to feel it.”
That’s the book in a line. And maybe the whole trip.
At its core, this is a story about feeling everything — grief, joy, confusion, love — without needing to explain it.
Writing, Remembering, and Raising Hell
Zacharias has never shied away from hard topics. She’s written about war, justice, and women’s rights. She’s taught First Amendment law. She’s stood in courtrooms and classrooms, making space for voices usually silenced.
But this book is different.
It’s messy and tender. Sometimes it’s poetry. Sometimes it’s banter. And sometimes it just stops mid-thought, like a woman remembering something too big to speak out loud.
Her co-conspirator, Wade, adds rhythm. Her verses punctuate Zacharias’ prose like heartbeats.
Together, their voices blend like whisky and stormwater — strong, warm, unpredictable.
One paragraph in the book reads simply: “We didn’t come to Scotland to be better people. We came to remember who we were before we got so polite.”
Honestly? That might be the real thesis.
