Dove of White Flame
A Historical Novel About Saint Columba
- Fiction
- Publisher: Resource Publications (Wipf and Stock)
- Published: 2020
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Publisher's Description
Dove of White Flame: A Historical Novel About Saint Columba aims to enter the sixth-century world of Saint Columba--also known as Colmcille--as vividly as possible while maintaining historical accuracy. It aims to give the reader a taste of sixth-century Ireland and Scotland, known then as Eriu and Alba, with their sights and sounds and smells, and a feel for Saint Columba's character, growth, and inner spirit. The reader will meet his parents, his family, his friends, his teachers, his fellow monks, and his inspirers, as well as his enemies--all of them people who really lived. The reader will follow the saint through miracles, sea voyages, successes and humiliations, confrontations, plague, pirates, angels, a monster, and even the famous "Battle of the Books," and will see something of his great love for nature, for God, for his fellow humans, and for the Psalms of David which were his spiritual daily bread. Apart from a very short prologue, which gives a description of the appearance of the saint in adulthood, the book starts with his mother's pregnancy and ends with his remarkable and beautiful death.
Endorsements (4)
“The author traces Columba’s life from holy birth to student under Ireland’s best tutors, from founder of monastic communities to his exile and last great foundation at Iona. . . . She captures for us his prophetic talent, his love of nature and poetry, his flaws, but above all his passion for God. Columba stands astride Britain and Ireland, a symbol in a post-Brexit world of the fellowship that can flourish again between these two lands. In a time of flight from abusive hierarchy in the church, this book sparks hope that new, grassroots monastic communities may revive the love of Christ among our peoples today.”
“In this novel, we get to know Columba not as a haloed saint of the past, but as someone who was as rugged and human as the rest of us, yet who had a burning passion for Christ that transformed the world around him. We are given fascinating insights into the world of the sixth century, but at the same time we have a story which has much to say to our twenty-first-century world.”
“As Stella Durand implies, tradition sometimes embellishes verifiable fact; yet there is a sense in which ‘tradition’ becomes part of history. No fewer than thirty-five such saints are accorded a place in the Church of Ireland’s Book of Common Prayer (2004), the ‘three patrons of Ireland,’ Patrick, Brigid, and Columba pre-eminent among them, and it is timely that Columba is the subject of this presentation of the man as well as the saint.”
“Marvelous and vivid, Saint Columba is brought to life in Dove of White Flame with great beauty and tenderness.”
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