Saoirse's Crossing

Saoirse grows up hearing the extraordinary stories of family members who died before her birth or in early childhood. Her aunt Miriam, who believed she had lived across a thousand years to be with her lover in each generation, the Moorish Princess Casilda. Her grandmother, Daireann. more than a healer and wise woman, and her father, Oisín, an alchemist and magician. But who is Saoirse?

I was Casilda's mother more than a thousand years ago, she tells her mother, Sarah.

Tucked away under a mountain in Roscommon in Oisín's family home, Saoirse meets Faolán, a local boy lost in their garden maze. As they play out stories from myth, Faolán's loyalty and love grows, but Saoirse craves adventure and is not easily won.

As their paths diverge, one momentous event threatens everything, leading Saoirse into a maze from which she might never emerge and taking Faolán on a quest on which their lives depend.

Spanning back into the mists of pre-history; travelling from Roscommon to Paris, Prague to Brittany, Budapest to Nice, Zaragoza to Tromsø, and bringing together Celtic mythology from Ireland and Brittany, Saoirse's Crossing asks questions of identity as contemporary as they are ancient, exploring the lengths we will go to for love.

Jan Fortune is a writer, mentor, yoga nidrā teacher and herbalist living in a forest in Finistère. She has a doctorate in feminist theology and is the founding editor of Cinnamon Press. Jan has taught writing courses across Europe. Her previous publications include creative non-fiction on the alchemy of writing, poetry collections and novels, most recently At world's end begin and Saoirse's Crossing. Jan writes at the intersection of story, poetry, herbalism and alchemy. You can follow her on Substack (https://substack.com/@janelisabeth) and she blogs and runs the writing community, 'Kith: for a different story' (https://janfortune.com/).