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Respected Jungian scholar Susan Rowland, Ph.D. makes her debut as a novelist with a cozy mystery, The sacred well murders (2022). Set against the backdrop of contemporary UK and infused with the mystical traditions of the British Isles, the novel features an unlikely trio of women who seek to solve a murder. They are up against The Reborn Celts, activists whose obsession with ancient spiritual practices veers off into possession, leading them to commit murder. Rowland reimagines mythic tales through a modern and distinctly feminine perspective in order to explore the power of community to heal.
The ancient Celtic myth of the well maidens tells a tale of the violation of maidens who were entrusted with preserving the balance between the needs of the land and that of humanity. Rowland gives us a refreshingly updated version of this story as the three female detectives collaborate through relationship and skill to solve the murder of a young woman and bring attention to the climate crisis. Working together, Anna, Caroline and Mary constitute a composite of the Triple Goddess—maiden, mother, and crone— each woman endowed with special gifts, but also possessing unique wounds. Inspired by the desire to help the others and put right the wrongs they have observed, Rowland's detectives form a sacred union and create a community based on mutual care, intuition, and love; in the end, their union enables each individual to become more whole. Her characters demonstrate the power of rejecting the accepted dominant cultural constructs that privilege rational thought over depth of feeling as a pathway to healing. Anna advises the others that to do this, one must “live it yourself, in your body …. It's not a thinking. It is being in the bones that soaks the flesh. It is re-creation” (p. 252).
Woundedness in conjunction with healing is a classic trope of the detective mystery novel genre, and as such, The sacred well murders examines what happens to people when wounds don't fully heal.