This New York Times bestseller from โone of the great storytellers of our timeโ (San Francisco Book Review) turns from the glamour of the royal courts to tell the story of an ordinary woman, Alinor, living in a dangerous time for a woman to be different.
A country at war
A king beheaded
A woman with a dangerous secret
On Midsummerโs Eve, Alinor waits in the church graveyard, hoping to encounter the ghost of her missing husband and thus confirm his death. Until she can, she is neither maiden nor wife nor widow, living in a perilous limbo. Instead she meets James, a young man on the run. She shows him the secret ways across the treacherous marshy landscape of the Tidelands, not knowing she is leading a spy and an enemy into her life.
England is in the grip of a bloody civil war that reaches into the most remote parts of the kingdom. Alinorโs suspicious neighbors are watching each other for any sign that someone might be disloyal to the new parliament, and Alinorโs ambition and determination mark her as a woman who doesnโt follow the rules. They have always whispered about the sinister power of Alinorโs beauty, but the secrets they donโt know about her and James are far more damning. This is the time of witch-mania, and if the villagers discover the truth, they could take matters into their own hands.
โThis is Gregory par excellenceโ (Kirkus Reviews). โFans of Gregoryโs works and of historicals in general will delight in this page-turning taleโ (Library Journal, starred review) that is โsuperbโฆ A searing portrait of a woman that resonates across the agesโ (People).