LONGLISTED: Exeter Novel Prize

‘A perfect blend of research and storytelling’ Irish Examiner

Seven-year-old Wilfrid lives a privileged life as the eldest son of the warmaster to the King of Northumbria. But his life is turned upside down when he is given away, without warning, to the monks of Lindisfarne.

There he is taken under the wing of Cuthbert, the eccentric prior, who tries to cure him of the demons that torment him. But everywhere the boy goes, he seems to bring ill-fortune: to Fergus, drowned in the freezing North Sea, or to Sigi, his brother, struck down by plague when Wilfrid finds his way back home.

As he comes of age and major events erupt around him - war with the Picts, religious schisms and the queen's desperate measures to conceive a son - he pieces together his own family history and the ageing Cuthbert's part in it.

Vividly conveying the hardships and compensations of monastic life in a brutal age, this richly evocative tale of seventh-century England - based on the chronicle of the real St Cuthbert - offers some startlingly modern lessons about trauma and guilt.