In Year of Wonders Geraldine Brooks takes us back to the plague years of 17th century England.
The culprit for the epidemic that afflicts an isolated village in the hill country of England is an infected bolt of cloth carrying the plague. As the epidemic spreads, housemaid Ann Frith emerges as an unlikely heroine and healer. Soon death reaches into every household and the villagers turn first to prayers, then to murderous witch-hunting. Anna struggles to survive and grow as her community threatens to disintegrate and she is caught up in illicit love.
The New Yorker: “The novel glitters…A deep imaginative engagement with how people are changed by catastrophe.”