A young woman in 14th-century Provence risks everything to cultivate her talents and serve her city in Eleanore of Avignon, the engrossing historical fiction debut of Elizabeth DeLozier.
Eleanore Blanchet learned to be an herbalist and a midwife from her mother, who, in turn, studied under her physician father. While gathering ingredients for her remedies, an accidental meeting with Guigo de Chauliac, physician to Pope Clement VI, brings Eleanore an opportunity: she will use her knowledge of herbalism to treat the pope's ailment, and de Chauliac will take her on as an apprentice. Then Queen Joanna of Naples, accused of murdering her husband, comes to Avignon for trial. The pregnant queen insists on having Eleanore for her midwife, but with plague ravaging the city, Eleanore and de Chauliac will need to muster everything they have to find a treatment.
DeLozier paints a vivid picture of life on the margins of a medieval city. Eleanore's mother, abandoned at the end of her life by those who thought her knowledge was evidence of witchcraft, stands as a sharp warning of what could happen to a woman who steps outside of her place--which is even more of a risk to an unmarried woman like Eleanore. The tension rises as the plague spreads throughout the city and religious fanatics gain power, threatening Eleanore and the Jewish colleagues of de Chauliac with whom they consult in search of a cure to protect those who could turn on them at any moment. The result is a gripping portrait of a woman's bravery in a city on the brink. --Kristen Allen-Vogel, information services librarian at Dayton Metro Library