This New York Times bestseller from āone of the great storytellers of our timeā (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 Midsummerās 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. Alinorās suspicious neighbors are watching each other for any sign that someone might be disloyal to the new parliament, and Alinorās ambition and determination mark her as a woman who doesnāt follow the rules. They have always whispered about the sinister power of Alinorās beauty, but the secrets they donāt 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.
āThis is Gregory par excellenceā (Kirkus Reviews). āFans of Gregoryās works and of historicals in general will delight in this page-turning taleā (Library Journal, starred review) that is āsuperbā¦ A searing portrait of a woman that resonates across the agesā (People).