"Prophet", the second novel in the acclaimed historical-fiction series "The Chronicles of Iona" (named to "Kirkus Reviews'" Best of 2012; Silver Prize Winner, "ForeWord Reviews" 2012 Book of the Year Awards, Historical Fiction), continues the story of the two men who laid the foundations of the Scottish nation, an Irish monk, Saint Columba, and a Scottish warlord, Aedan mac Gabran. They were a real-life sixth-century Merlin and King Arthur and their story has never been told. It is 567 A.D. Four years after journeying with the Scottish warrior Aedan mac Gabran into the land of the wild Picts, Irish abbot-prince Columba is forced back there to seek Aedan's aid for an epic battle. Aedan must leave his Pictish wife and child and return to his first love, now married to the brother whose princely power he has vowed to help save. Yet once home, the friends' struggle to quell the chaos of the western shores only unearths even more secrets and prophecies that test old loyalties and faiths of all kinds. While Saxon invaders spread from the east and the Britons' many kingdoms battle for sovereignty, the Scots' ancestors from Ireland also enter the fray, and Aedan and Columba must fight enemies both political and personal in a desperate attempt to protect everything they have come to love. "Prophet" plunges the reader into the world of 6th-century Scotland, Ireland and Britain, a world on the brink of either collapse or creation, poised between myth and history.
