An eclectic and unorthodox author, Sara Maitland has written fiction, popular and academic theology, journalism, social and literary criticism, screenplays, biography, and the text for illustrated books on subjects as disparate as Greek mythology and gardening. In a prolific career she is best known, however, for her feminist theology and for her novels and short stories, which have won a wide following as well as several awards.

Maitland herself sees more similarities than differences among her various works, writing in a statement posted on the website of the 1999 cultural-exchange program Island Voices 3 that "they're all about the same things . . . about sex and gender and risk and beauty and stories and language and power and glory." Indeed, many of these themes and elements can be traced throughout her body of work, although they seldom turn up in precisely the combinations one might expect. Particularly unusual is the manner in...