Kirjahaku

Working in secret for a radical fourteenth-century Oxford professor who would translate the Bible into English, Reformation-era master illuminator Finn forms a dangerous alliance with Lady Kathryn, a widow desperate to protect her inheritance from the depredations of the church and the monarchy. A first novel. Reprint. 75,000 first printing.

In the fifteenth century, with religious intolerance spreading like wildfire across Europe, Englishwoman Anna Bookman and her grandfather, Finn, earn a living in Prague by illuminating precious books---including forbidden translations of the Bible. As their secret trade grows ever more hazardous, Finn urges Anna to seek sanctuary in England. Her passage abroad, however, will be anything but easy. Meanwhile, a priest in London, Brother Gabriel, dutifully obeys church doctrine by granting pardons . . . for a small fee. But when he is sent to France in disguise to find the source of the banned manuscripts finding their way to England, he meets Anna, who has set up a temporary stall as a bookseller. She has no way of knowing that the rich merchant frequenting her stall is actually a priest---just as he does not know that he has met the woman for whom he will renounce his church. It is only in England, which is far from the safe harbor once imagined, that their dangerous secrets will be revealed.

February, 1642. With the King and Parliament at loggerheads, England is rushing headlong into a brutal and bloody war. Caught up in the turbulence are two formidable women who face difficult and dangerous times ahead. Forced to abandon her children and leave for foreign shores, the extravagant and unpopular Queen Henrietta Maria discovers that she cannot rely on the loyalty of her former friends and relatives in the royal courts of Europe. Meanwhile, her friend and former lady-in-waiting, the beautiful Countess of Carlisle, determines to remain loyal to the King, despite his craven betrayal of her lover and protector.Separated from their menfolk, these two very different women determine to do what they can to survive in a world where brother is at war with brother, a world where no one can be trusted. But the war will change both their lives in ways they could never have imagined.