A Blue Forest

"A monastery is a battlefield, by and large.""How is that?" Sister Isobel paused for a moment. "A question of random 'incidents', should I say? Schoolyard malice. Low cunning. Endless invisible irritations selected by a sadist of genius." "But why?" said Jill, feeling rather stunned."My dear, it's the price one pays. The centuries bear witness. 'Where lions feed, the jackals gather'. I expect you'll see this perfectly, before too long."This unusual drama, set in the wild north of New Zealand, might be termed 'Kiwi Gothic'. It concerns Jill, who takes a job as housekeeper to an eccentric English hermit nun, Sister Isobel. Both Jill and her husband Martin, who is confined to a wheelchair after a road accident, come to stay at the hermitage in order to find solace and healing when a devastating tragedy strikes them. There, they both begin to sense new directions for their lives, but even in this remote environment the disciplines of monastic life are stern and inviolable. When Liam, an old friend of Martin's, begins to visit him at night bringing whisky, marijuana, and compromising photographs of Jill with Gary, a local forester, an explosive situation develops that threatens all their futures, and even that of the hermitage itself.