The Unquiet Land: A Novel of Medieval Ireland

Ireland in the Year of Our Lord 1214…Mairead ní Cormac lives in Clonmacnoise, a great monastic community in the center of Ireland. Her family appreciates good ballads and she thrills at accounts of glorified and heroic violence, never thinking she will find a knife in her hand and the need to use it. But Ireland is a place of violent confrontation—among the Irish clans, and with the encroaching armies of the English crown. In a land of intellectual and religious devotion that still vibrates with the rhythms of ancient beliefs, Mairead is surrounded by Crusader knights, clan chieftains, abbots and bards, and learns a useful craft from an herbalist nun. Despite their devout Catholicism, most of the residents of Clonmacnoise still believe that fairies live just beneath the surface of the landscape. From Clonmacnoise to the far West of Ireland, to the scholastic city of Oxford, Mairead must make decisions that decide life and death, peace or war, and freedom or bondage.