Dancing with Shadows

About the Book

Nestled in a lush green valley at the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains lies the old stone mansion, Raven´s Winter, home to a covenant of Celtic peoples and their followers that traces its history back over two thousand years to its homeland in the northern reaches of Ireland. Basically shunned by the people of the nearby town of Northern Fork, this group still attends to many of the ancient traditions of their culture while also blending into the mainstream of the modern world.

    This is the story of Emily D´Artagan, heir apparent to stewardship of the clan of Raven´s Winter, and the autumn she returned home from college for Samhain, the Celtic new year and the annual celebration that brings the entire Covenant together from all around the world. She has returned home to begin the process of taking over the responsibility for her position from her grandparents, Artuer and Anthrea. They have been host and hostess far past their expected terms due to the murders of Emily´s parents years earlier on the Samhain night they were to ascend to the stewardship.

    Emily´s parents were poisoned that night as toasts were raised to their new posts. One young woman, Maria, reveals herself and attempts to escape the great dining hall. In the ensuing confusion Emily sets her two Borzoi hounds on the hapless Maria and they slay her on the spot. With Maria dead, it is assumed by the police and the covenant alike that the sad case is closed.

    The night of her arrival home Emily and a young man make eye contact as she is leaving the bus station. This is Joseph Alberg, a police detective with the Northern Fork Police Department. Both of them feel an unexplainable attachment to the other, even though Joseph is Hebrew and Emily is considered a pagan.

    When Emily finds an Ogam, a secret coded message carved on an oaken shaft, she realizes that it is evidence of a conspiracy within the Coven that led to her parents´ murders. She recognizes all the coded names except the first. Unsure of what to do, she decides to try an ancient Celtic process to speak with the dead, and she spends the night of Samhain upon the burial mound of her mother and father.

    Emily inadvertently releases the vengeful wrath of a peoples long thought relegated to myth and legend, and those whose names were carved in oaken incrimination begin to fall to the embodiment of that wrath. Even the powers of ancient magic cannot reveal to Emily that first name, the instigator of the foul deed. As her romance with Joseph takes form the strange and mystical happenings at the Winter threaten to destroy their relationship.

    Sammy Carr, Joseph´s Jamaican born partner, is beginning to suspect that Emily knows much more about what is going on within that old estate then she is willing to reveal. Despite his disbelief in anything spiritual or occult, Sammy has an unfortunate sensitivity to things outside the realms of the normal.

    And so the stage is set as the plot twists on, winding the characters toward a conclusion that can only be found in the misty woodlands at the edge of Raven´s Ribbon, set beneath the shining silver light of a full autumn moon.. From the Daily Press Sunday supplement, "Book Corner", Jan. 7, 2001: "A mixture of modern police drama and Celtic lore, ´Dancing With Shadows´ is a fast paced, engaging read." Melissa Simpson.

About the Author

J.G. Pajot was born in 1955 at Fort Hood, Texas, and was raised an "army brat." He lives in southeastern Virginia with his Pomeranian, Walter, and his collections of medieval arms replicas, Celtic music, orchids, and other tropical plants. Besides writing he also enjoys gardening, golfing, and sailing.