Helpful Score: 7
With Elizabeth Chadwick you just feel like you're living the history she brings to life through her words. She makes you understand how they think and feel in this time period. It's not romanticized at all... and definitely not a time I would pick to live my life at all.....and yet, it's still so interesting and all-engrossing: the way they think, live, love.... get through each day. The author brings to life each character; we may not like them but at least she allows us to understand how they came to act in the way they do and to appreciate why they make their choices. Her research is obvious, how else could she bring to life these characters and their trials with such compassion. I highly recommend this novel to anyone who loves a good "realistic" romance, where "happily ever after" is not guaranteed, but human emotion is shared and revealed in it's rawest forms. Also, although the historical aspects are wonderful, this is not what makes the story so compelling..nor why I recommend it to the history buffs among us.
Helpful Score: 1
Using a background of medieval England in the time of William the Conqueror, Chadwick's writing makes you feel as if you live beside the characters. The story starts out with Ailith, a Saxon wife who is widowed after her husband attends William's coronation. Her two beloved brothers have already been slain defending their country and King Harold. Chadwick wrote her first novel at the age of fifteen. It was then she became so fasicnated with historical fiction that it became her life's work. The medieval warhorse that dominated history in the era of this novel likewise fascinated the author and becomes the thread that ties the characters toether. Several rely on the breeding of warhorses for their life's work. The story begins with Rolf de Brize, whose role in war leaves Ailith, a Saxon wife, without her child, her husband, her home and her brothers. Rolf falls in love with Ailith and they have a daughter named Julitta. Of course, Rolf is married to someone else and finds himself leading a double life that eventually falls apart. Basically two love stories, the novel unfolds with skill and care as the couples lead their own lives and encounter each other in various believable ways. Can someone fall in love at the age of five? Julitta believes she so but her love marries her half-sister and the novel evolves from there.
