What's Camlann, you ask? It's where King Arthur fought and died, run through by his enemy Mordred's sword--maybe. That's what the legend tells us, but no one is sure where Camlann is. Debut novelist Sean Pidgeon approaches the subject from a different angle in Finding Camlann. It's part love story, part literary suspense and--because Pidgeon's tale focuses on the search for the field where Arthur was killed--part archeology, too... and all Welsh.
Archeologist Donald Gladstone hopes to publish a book about the "real" Arthur, as revealed in the literary and historical record. He's trying to find his way through his research when he hears news of an exciting archeological discovery at Devil's Barrow, near Stonehenge--bones of ancient fighters and a "magical chalice" that "might" be the Holy Grail. Could it be the burial site for Arthur and Guinevere? Add to this his discovery of an old, obscure Welsh poem about Arthur that seems to contain a geographical reference to the Barrow. Then add Julia Llewellyn, who works at the Oxford English Dictionary's offices and is fluent in Old and Middle Welsh. They meet and seem sympatico, but she's married to Hugh Mortimer, heir to a major collection of ancient manuscripts, and Donald is himself recently divorced.
Pidgeon weaves a fairly intricate tale drawing quite a bit on literature, old dusty manuscripts and variant translations of ancient texts. Then there's the geography of Wales, which plays a significant role in the novel, as does the historical undercurrent of Welsh hatred for all things English. (Or, as the old Welsh poet Caradoc Bowen, whom Donald consults, puts it, a "once-glorious country that has seen only ruin and destruction at the hands of the noble Englishman.") There's also a mysterious group of militant Welsh nationalists called Dragon's Fire, to which Hugh may belong....
Finding Camlann shares plot elements similar to those of a Dan Brown novel, but it's more like Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose in terms of the serious, sometimes arcane way it involves the reader in scholarly and historical matters. Although the romance part of Pidgeon's tale doesn't seem to quite catch fire, readers interested in a thoughtful mystery with strong literary underpinnings will enjoy the bookish puzzles hidden within. --Tom Lavoie
Shelf Talker: An enthralling literary and archeological mystery about King Arthur's legendary burial place in ancient Wales.