Pilgrim Souls is a novel which explores how the unknown past can throw its shadows onto the present and onto the personal life of someone who has had no previous known connection to events in the past. Anna, a student in Adelaide, is coping with the recent death of her mother, Eleanor. Eleanor had always kept her past life, growing up in Scotland, a close secret. After her death, Anna begins to explore her mother's relics and discovers, through the Internet, that she has relatives still living back there. She is offered the chance of a scholarship to London University and uses this as an opportunity to meet these unknown relatives, chief of whom are her grandparents.