The Chronicles of Iona: Island-Pilgrim

"Island-Pilgrim", the third novel in the acclaimed historical-fiction series "The Chronicles of Iona" (named to "Kirkus Reviews'" Best of 2012; and Silver Prize Winner, "ForeWord Reviews" 2012 Book of the Year Awards, Historical Fiction), continues the story of the two men who laid the foundations of the Scottish nation, an exiled Irish monk, Saint Columba, and a down-and-out Scottish warlord, Aedan mac Gabran. They were a real-life sixth-century Merlin and King Arthur and their story has never been told. It is 575 A.D. Against all odds and at great personal cost, Aedan mac Gabran, for many years an outcast amongst the barbarous Picts, has become king of the Scots of Dal Riata. With Columba, an exiled Irish prince and now abbot of the young monastery of Iona, he works to restore peace to a nascent kingdom riddled by blood feuds and bitter factions. Yet old enemies soon threaten to destroy all these two friends hold most dear, and Aedan is forced to scatter his family and go in search of a fabled lost prince who holds the key to unifying his ancestral homeland in the wilds of Ireland. Guiding him on this perilous mission is Columba who, by returning from exile to his beloved motherland, risks death at every turn. Beset on all sides by hostile Britons, Irish, and Picts, their quest to bring stability to a divided, contentious region comes at an unexpected cost neither is willing to pay. "Island-Pilgrim" brings to vivid and striking life the world of sixth-century Scotland and Ireland, a world struggling against forces both intimate and profound to shed the chaos of the Dark Ages for the light of a new age.