When Father Michael Walsh, a Jesuit priest on the western coast of Ireland, faces a charge of embezzlement, a London newspaper sends expatriate Irish reporter Hugh Buckley home to deliver a story-or else. Buckley and his photographer colleague Frederick Jones arrive in the village of Doolin to find themselves embroiled in a tangled mess of parish politics, occult practices, and bloody murder. By night, as wicked things rise from the earth, Buckley faces his own long-repressed struggles with his country, his abandoned faith, and his dead family. By day, he finds help, both professional and personal, from English Dominican friar Father Thomas Edmund Gilroy, OP, who has come to Doolin to support his friend Father Michael and to aid in the spiritual battle against the occult.

Can Hugh and Freddie save their employment-and their skins-as the grotesque violence intensifies? Or will they and the rest of the village of Doolin be consumed by dark powers lurking within the mysterious landscape of Ireland?