The Chronicles of Iona: Exile

About this book

Named to "Kirkus Reviews" Best of 2012. Silver Prize Winner 2012 "ForeWord Clarion" Book of the Year Awards Historical Fiction. "Exile" the first novel in the historical fiction series "The Chronicles of Iona" is the story of the two men who laid the foundations of the Scottish nation an Irish monk Saint Columba and a 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 563 A.D. The world has been plunged into chaos by the collapse of the Roman Empire and barbarian invasions: civilization holds on by a thread. Columba a powerful abbot and prince of Ireland is exiled for a violent act to the pagan colony of Dalriada on the west coast of Scotland. Awaiting him there is Aedan mac Gabran the down-and-out second son of the colonys previous king slain by the bloodthirsty Picts. Together this unlikely pair travels the breadth of a lawless divided realm each in search of his own kind of unity. Their path is fraught with blood feuds lost love sacrifice miracles dark gods and monsters. Beset on all sides their only hope is to become alliesand to forge a daring alliance with the pagan Picts. How Columba overcame exile and a crisis of faith to found the famous monastery of Iona (one of the greatest centers of learning in Dark Age Europe) and from it the Celtic Church in the British Isles; and how Aedan avenged his fathers death and became against all odds the progenitor of Scottish kings and the greatest warlord of his age begins here. For both what begins as a personal imperative becomes a series of events that lead to the foundation of Iona and the kingdom of Scotlandevents that literally change the world.Historically authentic yet told with a bold fictional sweep The Chronicles of Iona: Exile plunges the reader into the world of sixth-century Scotland and Ireland the veritable Dark Agesa world on the brink of either collapse or creation poised between myth and history.