After a life of passion and adventure that has brought her through
slavery to the Resurrection garden, through the controversies of the
Early Church to a hermit cave in southern gaul, Maeve, the Celtic Mary
Magdalen, returns to the Holy Isles accompanied by Sarah, her daughter
with Jesus. Their mission: to find Maeve's first-born child, stolen from
her by the druids more than forty years ago.
Since then, Maeve's homeland has suffered it's own trials--Roman
invasion and occupation. The Celtic tribes to the east and south are
under direct rule, and the Romans are determined to rout the resistance
of the western tribes, resistance fueled by the druids of Mona.
Just before she crosses the channel from Gaul to Britain, Maeve
encounters a man she mistakes for Jesus's ghost. This familiar stranger
is equally haunted, and the two are drawn into a moonstruck liason that
will entwine their lives in an impossible Celtic knot. For unbeknownst
to Maeve at the time, he is none other than General Gaius Suetonius
Paulinus, the newly-appointed Roman Governor of Britain.
Maeve keeps this troubling tryst a secret even after she finds her
long-lost daughter Boudica, the fierce and charismatic queen of the
Iceni tribe. Druid-trained in her youth, Boudica married the Iceni king,
hoping to rally him to a rebellion for which he has no stomach. Now
estranged from her husband, Boudica keeps the old ways, sustained by her
pride in her descent form her father (and Maeve's!) the late great druid
Lovernios.
Seeking to circumvent disaster, Maeve travels back and forth from Iceni
country to Mona, from the heart of native resistance to a Roman fort on
the Western front, steadfast in her conviction: Love is as strong as
death.