Year Of Wonders

Product Description

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of March & People of the Book. A young womans struggle to save her family & her soul during the extraordinary year of 1666 when plague suddenly struck a small Derbyshire village. In 1666 plague swept through London driving the King & his court to Oxford & Samuel Pepys to Greenwich in an attempt to escape contagion. The north of England remained untouched until in a small community of leadminers & hill farmers a bolt of cloth arrived from the capital. The tailor who cut the cloth had no way of knowing that the damp fabric carried with it bubonic infection. So begins the Year of Wonders in which a Pennine village of 350 souls confronts a scourge beyond remedy or understanding. Desperate the villagers turn to sorcery herb lore & murderous witch-hunting. Then led by a young & charismatic preacher they elect to isolate themselves in a fatal quarantine. The story is told through the eyes of Anna Frith who at only 18 must contend with the death of her family the disintegration of her society & the lure of a dangerous & illicit attraction. Geraldine Brookss novel explores love & learning fear & fanaticism & the struggle of 17th century science & religion to deal with a seemingly diabolical pestilence. Year of Wonders is also an eloquent memorial to the real-life Derbyshire villagers who chose to suffer alone during Englands last great plague.