Evelina (amerigo) reviewed on 3/27/2010

At sixteen Patrick is kidnapped by Irishmen from his home in post-Roman Britain and sold into slavery where he is treated cruelly and nearly broken in spirit by his owner. Yet he manages to escape back to his homeland.

The novel opens with a mature, forty year-old Patrick sent back to Ireland to the country that enslaved him with the mission to convert the people of Eire to Christianity. But this is not a Patrick at peace with himself. He is driven by bitterness, anger, and insecurity at his former enslavement. It is only through his growing friendship with the Irish bard, Osian, (a bit of the paranormal is involved here because Osian comes from the otherworld to help Patrick) and his tales of his legendary Fenian father, Finn Mac Cool, that Patrick makes peace with his past and truly embraces the mystical island of Eire and its people. Yet this is a novel of Ireland's Druidic past, their sage beliefs and customs, and their bonds with earth and spirit, as well as Patrick's own conversion to understanding Irish ways and the way it begins to inform his Christianity. It is where past and present blend and begin to become one in this mystical and romantic retelling of ancient Ireland..

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