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 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 mid-point of the story when she finds herself at an impasse). It reflects religious tensions that have existed historically. It celebrates the natural world and the resilience of the human spirit in resisting a coercive authority. In doing so, Morag steps into her full personhood.
