The Changeling

Here, the author of the acclaimed "Confessions of a Pagan Nun " takes us to fourteenth-century Ireland for a strange and luminous tale of the elusive nature of identity and of triumph in adversity. "The Changeling " is the story of Grey, a peasant girl who is raised as a boy, and who, until adolescence, never doubts herself to be male. The revelation of her womanhood marks the beginning of her journey through a succession of changing identities—including son, wife, warrior, and mother—each of which brings its own special wisdom, but none of which, she discovers, can ultimately define her. In the course of her adventurous life, Grey deals with all the challenges of her tumultuous age—from political oppression to corrupt Church hierarchy to the horrors of the Black Death—ultimately finding peace and a kind of redemption by embracing the beautifully impermanent quality of identity that her unusual life has enabled her to understand. (Previously published in hardcover as "The Changeling of Finnistuath .")