Woman Who Loved an Octopus

And Other Saints' Tales

Reviving the first-millennium world of Celtic women saints—most of them far from saintly by current definitions—these inventive stories are not historical tracts or faithful retellings; instead they use the old legends as the framework for new plots, some of them set in the contemporary world. The perilous flight of Madrun, the daughter of King Gwyrtheryn, for example, is transmuted into a story of escape from an eastern European war zone, and St. Non is raped and expelled from her convent, as in the familiar version of the tale, but this time around she comes back for revenge.