Blog tour: The Priest's Wife

Welcome to the blog tour for The Priest’s Wife by AG Rivett!

More about the book…

The Priest’s Wife is set on an imaginary island, somewhere between Scotland and Ireland, a thousand years ago and a world away.

When her husband the priest dies, Morag loses more than her life partner. With him goes her home and her place in the community. In addition to these misfortunes, in a society that sets great store by lineage, she is challenged about the mysterious identity of her mother, and it is this that sets her on a quest of discovery that comes, at first, upon a blank, but in time leads her to the circle of the island's 'Guardians', who mediate her discovery of her mother's identity, and, step by step, her own deeper self-knowing and self-acceptance.

When Aidan, the new priest, undertakes a campaign to upturn the township's spirituality, which has accommodated older druidical forms alongside the Christ story, both he, and the community, are set on a collision course. As tension builds Micheil, the shareg (headman) of the town, must intervene. Finding no way through that conforms to the norms of his world, he must take a radical and unconventional step.

The book explores mental breakdown (Aidan's) and severe depression (Morag's, at the midpoint of the story when she finds herself at an impasse). At the point where Aidan can no longer perform his priestly role, the community leader calls on Morag to step into the breach. Through her childless marriage to Hugh she had, unwittingly, become equipped to take on this role. With the help of the Guardians, she has been enabled to imagine herself doing so.

More about the author…

Andrew (A.G.) Rivett was born in London. His first degree was in medicine, and he edited the medical school Gazette. He then practised in hospital medicine in London, and in a leprosy hospital in rural northern Nigeria.

In 1987 he was ordained into the stipendiary ministry of the Church of England, but after 12 years returned to medicine as a public health doctor in Southampton. During this time, he became a member of a writers' circle and wrote a collection of short stories.

Taking early retirement in 2006, he set off for Scotland, working variously as a handyman in a retreat centre, a farm hand on an organic farm, and writing and teaching an access course on microbiology for Moray College. It was in Scotland that he met his second wife, Gillian Paschkes-Bell. He moved to her home in the spiritual eco-community at Findhorn before finding his own croft on the off-grid Scoraig peninsula, on the lands of his Mackenzie ancestors. While living in Scotland, he and Gillian experienced and learned about Celtic spirituality through the ancient tradition of the Céile Dé. Andrew has three daughters, and two grandsons.

After he had completed the first draft of The Seaborne, Gillian became Andrew’s editor, working with him collaboratively to arrive at the published form – a role she has retained with The Priest’s Wife. They now live in Ceredigion, West Wales, on land that once belonged to Gillian’s mother and which they are cultivating as a wildflower meadow.

My impressions…

When requesting to review this book, I somehow missed the fact that it is the second book in the Isle Fincara Trilogy. I also failed to realise that it fell into the genre of historical fantasy. It turns out, we shouldn’t be scared of labels! While I always say that fantasy is not for me, I loved this book, which can be read as a standalone novel. Morag is a powerful female character and I thoroughly enjoyed following her story. While not being personally religious, I also found the elements of the Celtic tradition and of Christian theology incredibly fascinating and perfectly amalgamated in the narrative. This was a great out-of-my-comfort-zone reading experience!

Three words to describe it. Evocative. Spiritual. Gentle.

Do I like the cover? Yes, it’s beautiful.

Have I read any other books by the same author? No, but I would like to.