Former Findhorn resident AG Rivett has new novel The Priest's Wife published
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AN author who used to live near Findhorn has finished the second novel in a trilogy he started writing in the village.
AG (Andrew) Rivett lived at The Park between 2006 and 2008, where he mended bicycles - he was a part-time farm worker on Wester Laurenceton organic farm but also wrote and taught an access course in Microbiology for Moray College.
After becoming a crofter on the Scoraig peninsula in Ross and Cromarty, he continued to visit Findhorn and while laid up with a cold there he started writing his first novel, ‘The Seaborne’.
Now living in Wales, Andrew returned to the area to give pre-publication readings from his new novel, ‘The Priest’s Wife’.
He said: “It is rooted in the Scottish landscape and culture, set on an imaginary Celtic island between Scotland and Ireland a thousand years ago. Morag is at the heart of the story. She loses her home and place in her community when her husband the priest unexpectedly dies. When Aidan, the new priest, undertakes a campaign to upturn the township’s spirituality which has accommodated older druidical forms alongside the Christ story, both he and the community are set on a collision course.
“The headman of the town must intervene. Taking a radical and unconventional step to find a way through, he finds himself calling on Morag to step into the breach.”
A number of local people have reviewed The Priest’s Wife already.
Romany Buck said: “Poignant and sensitively told, it expresses deep truth about the significance of our times.”
Shirley Barr said: “The island-life is so beautifully imagined. Morag is magnificent and watching her story unfold was a gift.”
The book transported Ann Barr into “a magical alternative reality”.
She said: “I was captivated by the characters, the landscape, the Celtic spirituality and the situations Rivett portrays.”
Cornelia Featherstone and Sylvia Robertson read books to each other.
Cornelia said: “We enjoyed seeing how a strong woman in difficult circumstances finds power within a very patriarchal society, and how a holistic spirituality interacts with a restrictive religion.”
Finally, in Pluscarden Benedictines magazine, Brother Daniel wrote that “Modern counter-cultural aspirations run alongside the question of the relationship of religion and society, of evangelisation and enculturation.”
