She was Scottish, rather.

A book I liked very much at age 12 is: Shadow in Hawthorne Bay by Janet Lunn.

I tried to reread it. Was not the same. Oh well. I guess I'm no longer 12 or living on an island in a house surrounded by Scotch Broom. But it is still good. I might've been influenced by the book cover, too. The copy that the Schaumburg Public Library has a different version. I favor the cover on the copy I owned, which is at my mother's house in N.C., and it is also the one featured on the author's website.

I was always rather into the book's cover, actually. I was a visually oriented person. I always tried to be an artist. In all of my favorite books, I would draw many clumsy (but heart-soaring!!!) illustrations inside of them.

She's very interesting, this author (Janet Lunn). She sets her books around her own home. The Root Cellar was another good one.

Also really liked Emily Climbs by L.M. Montgomery, around this time. Here again, I think I was very interested in the book cover. The only version of the book cover that I can find on the web is athttp://skins.perildeity.net/lmm.php It looks all scrambled up.

It would be fun to collect various esoteric book covers and frame them. Well maybe.

Next, I want to figure out the author and title of another good book I read back when I was about 12. It was set in medieval times (in France maybe?) and the main character was a young woman whose uncle was an inventor of a new kind of clock. She goes to live with him for a time. There was kind of a lot of violence in this book. I think it opens up with her family getting killed, for example, and she does not escape unscathed. Oh yes...and she had a little brother who was different--like a mute or an albino or something, and she has to watch out for him.