“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 colony’s 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 allies—and 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 father’s 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 Scotland—events 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 Ages—a world on the brink of either collapse or creation, poised between
myth and history.
