'Broken Light' explores how both the brokenness and beauty of life and love can have enduring significance through relationship and art.

Introduced by a short poem depicting the Anglo-Saxon motif of ‘the sparrow through the hall’, the narrative then moves into prose; a lone man stands at the end of a pier, the wild November weather matching his inner turmoil having just witnessed the infidelity of his wife. Driven by the harshness of the elements to find refuge inside an ancient church he has an inexplicable and unlooked for spiritual experience while gazing at a seventh century stained-glass window.

Drawing on the rich spiritual and artistic heritage of the North East, the unfolding narratives are presented as a series of fragments which mirror the main character's fragmented state of mind. Alliterative poetry, telling the seventh-century tale of Alwin, a novice monk, is interspersed with prose, narrating the more contemporary story of Adam, an English literature lecturer working in Durham in the mid 1990s. Both journeys towards self-understanding and the rediscovery of lost knowledge begin against the sea-haunted backdrop of Northumbria.

Alwin’s story is presented as a recently discovered medieval manuscript, which Adam is translating into contemporary English. As his own life falls apart Adam finds his thoughts increasingly haunted by the ancient words. Overwhelmed by a sense of spiritual pursuit he finds himself driven towards the quiet Lucy, whom he has previously despised and feared. She emerges as the artistic, spiritual and physical catalyst for the story, an embodiment of wisdom and light.

Adam's psychological and spiritual journey unfolds alongside the poetical account of Alwin's physical travels as he accompanies his bishop and mentor, Benedict Biscop, to the continent and finally to Rome, to gather artifacts, books and skilled craftsmen and glaziers to furnish their newly founded abbeys.

Adam's inner journey is interwoven and informed by these voices from the past and also through his unlikely relationship with Lucy. Questioning everything he formerly believed, he gradually begins to see the possibility for redemption and meaning, acknowledging his own flaws and emptiness whilst recognising Lucy's spiritual substance and extraordinary gifting as a poet.