Get 50% off Catholic Books & eBooks

Discover the Next Tolkien & O'Connor

Join Here for FREE to Never Miss a Deal

Find new favorites & Support Catholic Authors

Genre

Historical Fiction

Audience

Adult

Author’s Worldview

Catholic

Year Published

2013

Themes

Persecution, English, Queen Elizabeth, English Culture, Anti-Catholicism, Protestant-Catholic Relations, Elizabethan England, Martyrdom, Martyrs, Vocations, Sacraments, the Priesthood

Reviewed by

A.R.K. Watson

In Elizabethan England, to be a Catholic is treason. To harbor a Priest is treason. To show sympathy or mercy to Catholics, or even to have vestments in the house is treason. Hunt sets her tense near-gothic novel in such a world. At the start of the book a poor farmer finds five village Catholics praying the rosary in his barn and kills three of them, the last two barely escaping with their lives. The local authorities are horrified at the man’s crime and what it could mean for their sleepy town.

One thing I appreciated greatly about Hunt was how she deftly shows that the earliest English anti-Catholicism wasn’t personal but political. Most of the Protestant & Atheist characters harbor sympathy and grief for the suffering their Catholic neighbors are going through and have friends and even family that still practice the faith. The Anglican priest in the town himself secretly wishes that he could have found peace and quiet as a monk in the now ruined & razed monasteries of the countryside. The local atheist magistrate suffers from PTSD nightmares of attacking innocent Catholic children on his naval raids on the Spanish coast. Though many in the town find the Queen’s rhetoric intoxicating, many other kind souls know that it should be no crime to follow the compulsions of one’s conscience. Throughout this suspenseful book there is the sense of a country grieving for its soul.

In order to avoid bringing down destruction on the few openly Catholic locals, the authorities attempt to downplay the events in their reports, letting the murderer go free if he hides the fact that two Catholics got away. The three who were martyred are given a burial in the local church. When one of the men wonders if it is prudent to bury treasonous Catholics in hallowed ground, the Anglican minister sharply reminds him that most of the bodies in the churchyard are Catholics already, that his very church building was a Catholic one before it was stolen, its windows smashed and its statuary burned or sold at auction.

The local’s kind efforts however are hindered when agents from the Crown itself arrive to investigate the matter and hunt down these hidden Catholics. It couldn’t be a worse time because the region’s new young priest has just been smuggled on shore and must dodge their trail if he is to make it to his new diocese. Without him the whole region would be without the sacraments. Now he must introduce himself to the community by bringing them the sad tidings of the murder of three of their own.

Meanwhile the mother of one of the martyred Catholics is waiting anxiously at home for the return of her daughter. Her daughter had left on a mission as a courier for secret messages among the region’s hidden Catholics, but was due to return by now. The mother must hide her anxiety from her neighbors and pretend to join in with them in defaming a local old widow who was recently hanged for having a priest’s vestments in her house. The mother knows that this widow wasn’t a Catholic, but acquired the stole when a local church was looted and probably only meant to sew the pretty lace into a dress or something. Still, she cannot reveal any of this.

Readers curious for a glimpse into pre-Protestant England, and all the treasures lost to that world will find Hunt’s book hauntingly beautiful and detailed. I didn’t know, for example, that the quintessential English Inn developed in direct response to the Anti-Catholic persecutions. Before travelers, rich and poor, knew they could find free hospitality at the many beautiful monasteries that littered the countryside. After the persecutions began those monasteries were either destroyed or claimed by the royal family for use as their own castles. Inns rose to fill the need for travelers, but they were never as accessible to the poor as the monks had been.

Be you Catholic, Protestant, or Atheist these insights are rare and interesting to see. Anyone with an interest in English history will find Hunt’s suspenseful novel a fascinating read.

Get Catholic Books & eBooks for as little as $1 to FREE

The Fire of Eden (The Harwood Mysteries Book 3) by Antony Barone Kolenc

The mystery of a stolen treasure might hold the key to Xan’s discernment about whether God is calling him to the priesthood or to Lucy.

A Pius Man by Declan Finn

A hilarious espionage action adventure in the Vatican. Also a halberd fight scene. Nuff Said.

From Afar by Roger Thomas

Three astronomers follow the stars in a search for order and meaning. An action adventure based on the three wise men of the Gospels.

A Fisher of Women: The Tale of the Forgotten Healer of Galilee by Catherine Magia

Before she and husband were Saints, Peter and his wife struggled just to heal themselves

The Silence of Bones by June Hur

A young slave girl in ancient Korea investigates a murder & meets real life Korean Catholic saints

Saint Michael: Above the 38th Parallel by Shanti Guy

The true story of St. Michael, the original punch-communism-in-the-face superhero

A Distant Prospect by Annette Young

Lucy has been broken by the horrors of polio and the war for Irish Independence. Can Australia offer her a new life and a new home?

Saint Magnus: The Last Viking by Susan Peek

A young Viking Prince evades a warlord while finding his own harrowing path to sainthood.

The Wind That Shakes The Corn: Memoirs of a Scots Irish Woman by Kaye Park Hinckley

Sold into slavery on her wedding night, an 18th-century Irishwoman struggles to free herself from her thirst for vengeance.

Finnian and the Seven Mountains (Vol.2) By, Philip Kosloski and Michael Lavoy

Can one map be the key to stopping the Viking Invasion?

The Tale of Patrick Peyton

How a humble, Irish immigrant brought Mary to Hollywood and then the World.

Julia’s Gifts by Ellen Gable

A story of love and God’s providence in times of war.

McCracken and the Lost Oasis by Mark Adderley

A swashbuckling adventure into Catholic history and archeology.

August & September New Book Releases

Step into Fall with a Good Book

The Book of Jotham by Arthur Powers

Experience Christ through the eyes of Jotham, his disabled disciple.

The Light of Tara by John Desjarlais

As the power of Rome crumbles, a teenage St. Patrick must decide between his home and sacrificing himself for those who had enslaved him.

St. Agnes and the Selkie by G. M. Baker

Cast up by the sea. Courted by the king. Followed by danger.

My Brother’s Keeper by Bill Kassel

What if you were Jesus’ protective older brother? Could you navigate the courts of Rome & Jerusalem to save him?

Murder in the Vatican by Ann Margaret Lewis

Sherlock Holmes teams up with Pope Leo XXIII to solve crimes in the Holy City.