Iolar: the Eagle with the Sunlit Eye

Stinging under the challenge of an unfamiliar Irish school system, fifteen-year-old Kieran is pressured by a rival into agreeing to a badly-applied wolf tattoo.

Days later, while walking to join his mother at a forensic excavation site, a bog collapses and Kieran is flung back into fourth century Ireland. Disoriented and afraid, he is helped, unwillingly, by the young girl Iomarca, who belongs to a tuath on the Burren, County Clare, in Iron Age Ireland. 

Intent on protecting her younger brother, Lon, from being offered up as a human sacrifice at the pagan festival of Crom Dubh, Iomarca at first resents Kieran’s presence. Unexpected allies turn up in the form of a band of Middle Eastern monks searching the coasts of Ireland and Scotland for a lost brother cast out for heresy.

All Kieran wants is to return home.

Does six-year-old Lon hold the key, with his elusive ways and ability to understand birds — in particular, iolar, the eagle with the sunlit eye? First, Kieran must contend with a menacing Druid called Mogh Ruith, his growing attraction to Iomarca, and the enmity flaring between Connacht and Mumu — modern day Munster — which threatens to explode into full scale war as competing provinces jockey for the High Kingship of Ireland. 

What Kieran discovers is that neither Lon nor Iomarca are who they believe themselves to be.

But nor is he.

Bog bodies and modern DNA research into the origins of an ancestral clan in the Hebrides combine with the light-sensing capabilities of bird navigation to form the backdrop of this meticulously researched Young Adult Historical Fantasy, which challenges conventional beliefs about pre-Patrician Christianity.