Nine years after moving from Belfast to London, Grace Byrne wonders whether or not she made the right decision. She finds little satisfaction in working for the Anchor news team, and the eternal bitterness of her boss doesn't make it any easier. The only positive thing about being stuck in the office every day is Andy, with whom she has been smitten since first joining the Anchor team. After a less than comfortable conversation with her boss’s assistant, Grace returns to her flat in Hampstead contemplating whether she herself might be the real cause of her dissatisfaction.
Her modest flat is her sanctuary; yet when Grace returns home exhausted on a particularly blustery evening, she discovers a door in her home that she's certain she has never seen before. Rife with curiosity, she opens the door, takes one tentative step, and falls into an abyss, leaving behind her home in Hampstead and landing inside a pirate ship on Clare Island, Mayo.
As Grace begins to unravel what has happened to her, she learns that she must now walk in the boots of Gráinne O'Malley, the notorious sixteenth-century female Irish pirate. At first, the reasons for this trans-migration and identity exchange are not clear, but Grace accepts her mission to follow in Gráinne's footsteps.
Cast into the drama of a revolt against Queen Elizabeth I, Grace finds her courage, her inherent sense of purpose, her distant heritage, her present-day raison d’etre, and of course love. Celestial Land and Sea transports readers to the generational source of our shared heritage, and of our recurring challenges and our transcendent triumphs.
