C.D. McCarthy's debut novel blends medieval Templar lore with contemporary fantasy

C.D. McCarthy's debut novel The Templar and the Magdalene uses a ghost to bridge medieval legend and contemporary life. The story follows Islay St. Clair, a Knight Templar who died at the Battle of Bannockburn but was given the option to become a spirit capable of inhabiting his own body. Centuries later, he is sent to modern-day New Forge, Rhode Island, to protect LaDonna McKenzie, a Black physician and the last living descendant of the Holy Grail bloodline, from demonic forces.

McCarthy, a native Ottawan who grew up in Hintonburg, brings to the novel a background in medieval history, medical librarianship, and public administration. She studied Medieval church history at Carleton University, medical librarianship at the University of North Carolina, and public administration at the University of Western Ontario. After a career in the medical field and municipal government, she moved to the U.S. with her husband and became a retired Duke University medical writer and librarian.

"Charles de Lint is another Ottawa author whose style and use of fantasy in a contemporary setting has influenced my writing," McCarthy says. "He wove the idea of the supernatural into modern life so well." De Lint's ability to weave the magical into the everyday informs McCarthy's approach: the novel grounds its fantasy elements in practical contemporary detail, from mundane aspects of modern life to the fantastical premise that a centuries-old Templar must learn how to navigate a world he barely recognizes.

Islay's bewilderment becomes the novel's recurring charm. Speaking limited English and peppered with French—his native tongue—he struggles to understand the contemporary world while searching for LaDonna. When he finds her, she takes him under her wing to help him acclimate to life in New Forge, and their friendship gradually deepens as he thwarts a soul-eater possessing various agents trying to destroy her.

The novel addresses contemporary social problems including gentrification, weaving them into a narrative that moves between fourteenth-century monastery ruins in Scotland and twenty-first-century Rhode Island. McCarthy has a talent for creating memorable characters that deepen on acquaintance, and her command of language evokes vivid, precise images of both the medieval and modern settings. "It was a given I would write this novel," she reflects.