NaGeira

R. Gordon Moyles is professor emeritus of English at the University of
Alberta. He is co-author of Imperial Dreams and Colonial Realities:
British Views of Canada, 1880–1914, author of The Salvation Army and
the Public, and editor of “Improved by Cult

The title, NaGeira, will likely conjure up for some the legend of Sheila
NaGeira, an Irish princess (by virtue of her family’s claim to the
throne of Connaught) who, in 1602, was rescued by the notorious pirate
Peter Easton and taken to Newfoundland. She supposedly married
Easton’s lieutenant, Gilbert Pike, settled near Carbonear, and there
gave birth to the first European child born into the new world.

That is what one expects to be the basis of this novel, but it is not.
Butler is interested only in the name and its mythical associations. His
novel is mainly a character study of a very old woman, a kind of
hag-witch naturopath, who gets entangled in the personal politics of her
community (the Bristol Plantation), which causes her to remember and
recount her young life in Ireland and England where (in one seemingly
implausible scene) she shared a jail cell with William Shakespeare. It
is, to be sure, a tour de force of the imagination, and this prolific
writer of such very good novels as Easton’s Gold (2005) and Stoker’s
Shadow (2003) carries it off with assurance. Butler’s style is
engaging, his depiction of inner conflict very convincing, and his
emotional tensions quite believable. But the novel still lacks a
particular setting (the Bristol Plantation could be anywhere), seems
weak in its reliance of the Irish mythology (of crone Sheila Na Gig, for
example), and, except for Sheila herself, offers only stereotypes as
supporting characters. Easton’s Gold was a much better novel.