Review: The Priest’s Wife

A. G. Rivett, The Priest’s Wife (Pantolwen Press 2023)

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/198910874-the-priest-s-wife?ref=nav_sb_ss_1_24

When her husband Hugh the parish priest dies, her adopted son Dhion—a time-traveller from the future introduced in Book One, The Seaborne—his wife Shinane and the other villagers help Morag with her loss. Shinane is carrying new life—twins.

Morag has lost her husband and come Bride’s Day will have to vacate the priests’ house. She has lost her place in the mediaeval Scottish/Irish island’s society and even feels alienated from her new grandchildren. She travels to Kimmoil, her birthplace two days north, on a quest to discover the identity of her own mother. Aided by the mystical Guardians of the Island, she embarks on a spiritual awakening.

She finds the welcome in Kimmoil less than warm; the town is suffering from an outbreak of scurvy. She meets the daughter of her half-brother, Sorcha, unloved as she had been, and Morag brings the girl back with her.

After Hugh’s death, the villagers look to Morag for pastoral and ritual care. ‘Ye’re the priestess, Auntie,’ says Sorcha. But when the new priest Aidan arrives, he tries to pull the parish away from their traditional druidic beliefs and customs, now deemed heretical, and butts head with the shareg (headman). The lives of Aidan and Morag reach a crisis point.

Beautifully written and evocative of the culture of the time. No anachronistic language intrudes upon the beautiful picture. We see a misty, green world, where the Otherworld of the Sidhe is not so distant from life among the living.

A doctor, crofter and ordained minister himself, Rivett understands well the tight relationship of the peasants to the land and the seasons, and the religious ideas and practices of the period. The contrast between the ‘nature-affirming’ Celtic faith and the ‘nature-denying’ Catholic is very much part of the dynamic between Aidan and Morag.

The review first appeared in Historical Novels Review.