This New York Times bestseller from "one of the great storytellers
of our time" (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 Midsummer's 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. Alinor's suspicious neighbors are watching
each other for any sign that someone might be disloyal to the new
parliament, and Alinor's ambition and determination mark her as a woman
who doesn't follow the rules. They have always whispered about the
sinister power of Alinor's beauty, but the secrets they don't 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.
"This is Gregory par excellence" (Kirkus Reviews). "Fans of Gregory's
works and of historicals in general will delight in this page-turning
tale" (Library Journal, starred review) that is "superb... A searing
portrait of a woman that resonates across the ages" (People).
