A Brief Synopsis

My Series is comprised of a total of 8 books:

The following 4 books have yet to be written, however, the considerable research and preparation has already been completed for all 4 volumes, including their synopsis and chapter outlines.

Book Five: A Bittersweet Farewell

Book Six: The World Within This One

Book Seven: The Otherworld

Book Eight: The Spiral

The Synopsis:

Book Two: Between Two Destinies

Book Two continues where Book One ends: Alexandra and Connor are working hard at their tasks in order to make possible their goal of a visit with the MacNessa clan in Ireland for the end of summer and into the autumn.

Two events occur which illustrate Alexandra’s Otherworldly gift of healing with the power of sunlight in her palms, proving to Connor and Conall the veracity of her extraordinary origins.

Alexandra is introduced to Geoff’s Russian patron, which causes tension between her and Connor. Nevertheless, it is to this man she confides her secret fear. Her friendship with him results in an unexpected outcome.

Chris Hughes, the professional hockey player, comes back into Alexandra’s world once more. Despite Connor’s initial misgivings about Chris’s unmistakable fascination for Alexandra, a close bond is formed between the four of them, and sealed with a special pledge they make during a long-weekend stay at Chris’s rented lodge in the Canadian wilderness.

Alexandra joins the MacNessa brothers for their customary week-long summer break at a rustic cabin on a secluded lake. During a long heart-to-heart talk with Conall one afternoon, Alexandra explains her theory of how some people seem to live a part of their life between two destinies—a kind of charmed limbo, while they await the moment when they must fulfill the next phase of their destiny. She believes such an occurrence is a period of grace granted to some to enable them to gather the strength they will need before facing the next phase of their life.

Alexandra is certain that the life she is soon to share with Connor and his family in Ireland will be just such an experience—a chance to be content and at peace before she must heed to the demands of her peculiar fate.

Book Three: The Clan of the High King

Book Four: The Pagan Code

Both Book 3 and Book 4 take place entirely in Darragh, Ireland. The reader is introduced to the MacNessa clan and a number of peripheral characters, some of whom will have an impact on Alexandra’s current life (and her future).

A close bond is formed between Alexandra, Connor and his cousin Cannis, an unconventional triumvirate, bound by their Pagan codes, beholden to no one, in a world of their own making—a fulfillment of the Cailleach’s prophecy regarding Alexandra’s destiny.

Alexandra also discovers an intriguing aspect related to the night of her birth from, of all people, Barnabus, the old man from whom she and Connor and Conall purchase the eighteenth century farmhouse.

This sojourn in Ireland proves to Alexandra that her time of between two destinies has begun.

Book Five: A Bittersweet Farewell

Book 5 takes place directly after the end of Book 4, and concerns Alexandra’s life in Canada, prior to and including her marriage. There are alarming issues with Connor’s brother Conall. As well, family gossip from Ireland regarding Cannis is deeply troubling to Alexandra and Connor, but they are forced to bide their time until they return to Ireland to get to the bottom of the rumours.

Book Six: The World Within This One

Book 6 is about Connor’s and Alexandra’s life in Ireland, which is, indeed, the attainment of all they had hoped it would be—until one day, when everything abruptly changes. This is signalled by a curious “message” left for Alexandra which she soon discovers is from the Cailleach, the old hedge-witch who lives in the nearby woods, and who was the one who had originally revealed the truth of Alexandra’s origins and predicted her fate.

Now follows a difficult period for Alexandra, a time of transition and instruction (from the Cailleach), a preparation for when the Sídhe will come to reclaim her. This incident takes place on Alexandra’s birthday, the eve of Beltane, the summer solstice, an important event in the seasonal cycle for all Celts. Connor and his brother and cousin are the anguished witnesses to this occurrence, of which they are helpless to intervene.

Alexandra is declared dead, there is a body, there follows an inquest, but to Connor, Conall and Cannis, they know she is now existing on another plane, in the Otherworld, for they all saw her taken away through the ancient “fairy mound” by one who looked exactly like Alexandra’s drawings of what she called The Mysterious Warrior. The MacNessa men are convinced he was one of the Sídhe. But this is small comfort to them, for they know Alexandra is lost to her loved ones and her world forever.

Book Seven: The Otherworld

Book 7 begins with Alexandra awakening in the Otherworld, and struggling to accept her circumstances and adapt to the strange place she has been brought to. Her grief at all she has lost is terrible, preventing her from fully overcoming her difficult metamorphosis, and it is only through the auspices of Ciarán, the “protector” who had brought Alexandra from her world to this one, that she eventually is able to find closure and begin to heal.

She has several “mentors”, vaguely familiar to her as the “mysterious beings” she had dreamt of throughout her childhood, their images of which she had filled her sketchbooks with. These venerable men teach her about this place she has been brought to, of her origins, and, most importantly, of the reason for her creation—she is their Aibhlinn, their longed-for, wished-for child. For, with her unique skills, she is the only one capable of detecting where the infiltration of the enemy of the Sídhe takes place, through “splits” in the invisible veil which separates one world from the other. In addition, it is through her abilities that Alexandra must “heal the breach” to prevent further access of the enemy to the land of the Sídhe. This is a difficult and dangerous task, for, despite her immortality, Alexandra is nevertheless subject to injury or death “by accident or by the contrivance of her enemies.”

Through her mentors, Alexandra slowly comes to a deeper understanding about herself when she learns the answers to the many peculiar aspects of her character and behaviour that were a puzzle for her throughout her life in The Other Realm, the term the Sídhe use for this world. She also makes an astonishing discovery about the connection between the MacNessas and her main protector, Ciarán. These revelations are a reminder to her that the path of life is never a straight line, but a spiral—one continues to come back to what they thought they understood, only to see deeper truths.

Book Eight: The Spiral

In Book 8, Alexandra has at last come to terms with her unusual circumstances, and in surrendering to the destiny she had feared all her life, she is able to not only accept but embrace the world she must now live in, and the responsibilities that are dependant on her supernatural skills. Her training has concluded and soon she embarks on the first of what will be numerous undertakings to counter and obstruct the enemy’s tactics. From the frequent dangers she must endure, she acquires an inner strength and confidence that she had never known she possessed.

Mindful of the threat she presents to the enemy, Alexandra knows she can never take for granted their determination to destroy her; regardless, despite the precautions of her five protectors, in an unguarded moment she is captured and taken through the “split” to their realm.

What follows for Alexandra is a terrifying ordeal of imprisonment in a hostile environment, where her survival depends upon the least remarkable of her skills: her talent as a storyteller. Just as Sheherazade beguiled her Sultan captor with her fables in the Arabian One Thousand and One Nights, Alexandra regales the fierce and implacable Branduff, the leader of the People of the Grey Mist, with her vast collection of tales, to soothe his troubled mind and painful headaches. So dependant is he of her gentle ministrations that Branduff dismisses the urgings of his brother to kill Alexandra, much to the brother’s alarm, for he can see that the Sídhe girl is weaving a spell of enchantment over her captor.

Alexandra knows her chances for rescue are slim-to-non-existent, but she refuses to give up hope, and eventually she comes to the conclusion that there is something terrible and unthinkable she must do if her protectors are to be successful in finding her—she will have to kill Branduff.

I would like to conclude by saying that scattered throughout Books 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 are numerous, subtle and seemingly extraneous foreshadowing devices, every one of which the reader will discover in Books 7 and 8 to have significance.