The Isle Fincara Trilogy
News flash...
A book that draws inspiration from the Western Isles and Celtic Christian spirituality, The Shareg, the final book of my Isle Fincara Trilogy, will be launched at the Iona Community Shop on Thursday October 8th 2026, ahead of the Iona Festival of Writing and Storytelling.
The Seaborne —“a parable for our torn times”
Damian Walford-Davies
The Seaborne is about a man from our own times, John Finlay, whose London engineering business fails. In panic he runs away to Scotland and arrives on the quay at Mallaig, looking for work as a deck-hand on a deep-sea fishing boat. The next picture we have is from the perspective of a raven, soaring above a sea-coast, watching a small boat coming to land. Then we're into the viewpoint of one of the fishermen, Dermot, bringing ashore a body found at sea.
By the time we're in John's mind again, he's hallucinating. Only when the fever that followed his ordeal has left him do we accompany him through his dawning realisation that he has not, as he thought, been washed up on some Hebridean shore. His surroundings look medieval. They're clearly pre-industrial. The boats have sails, not engines. The round houses have thatched roofs, and no chimneys. There are no vapour-trails in the sky. People are amazed at the zips on his clothes. This is not a Scottish island in ordinary time.
The Priest’s Wife —“a work of great beauty and imagination”
Rolf Billes, Iona Community
The story is presaged by the visit of a wandering vagrant, Gormagh, who confronts Morag:
‘You!’ His eyes were wide, the whites bloodshot. ‘Do you not know who you are?’ … ‘Who was it gave you birth? It was she, was it not? She! She!’
The question disturbs her. She never knew her mother; she is haunted by taunts that echo in her mind from childhood: Who's your mother? Don’t you know?
Morag has lived with this unknowing all her life.
But as Hugh sickens, then dies, so her position in the community crumbles. She must set out to find the answer to Gormagh's question, and find herself anew.
Her quest takes her first to Kimmoil, where she grew up. Arriving in the hungry quarter of the year, she has a cool reception from the shareg (headman) and an enigmatic answer from the town's keeper of records.
Meanwhile Father Aidan has come as Hugh's replacement. Unlike Hugh and the old archpriest, Aidan is intolerant of the blend of Druidical myth and Christian story that has nourished the Islanders. Indeed, he is under instruction from the new archpriest to destroy it and bring in its place a more patriarchal creed.
Two people: a priest's widow and a priest, linked by role yet spiritually poles apart. And both must find the place in the community where they belong.
The Shareg
When the town’s headman, the shareg, feels his age and must retire, Dhion finds himself caught up in the leadership contest. But soon a much bigger struggle will face the Islanders, heralded by the Archpriest’s pelerines—a new religious order, now on the move, and intent on changing everything.
A tale of courage and conflict, loyalty and betrayal, played out by strong characters, and contrasting the organic development of a culture with the impact of an inflexible ideology.
Book-launch on Thursday October 8th 2026 at the Iona Community Shop, ahead of the Iona Festival of Writing and Storytelling.