Overview

In thirteenth century Cornwall, young Megge has just come of age to be apprenticed to her mother, the healer of Bury Down. But first, she must accept and vow to protect The Book of Seasons, an ancient tome that holds life-sustaining power harnessed centuries earlier by Murga, the first seer of Bury Down. At her vowtaking ceremony, yearning to accept her inheritance and take her place among her family's long line of healers and seers, Megge reaches for the book. When she touches it, she feels something writhe within it and becomes convinced that the book is cursed and that she too will be cursed if she accepts it. Despite her mother's pleas to protect the book from the one who would usurp its power, Megge refuses to even look at it. But when a Blackfriar abbot arrives in the village claiming to be under orders to root out heretics and imprisons the healer for failing to turn over her ""demon's book,"" will Megge finally be persuaded to take that vow?

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9781734316803

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Reviews

Megge is a protagonist easy to fall in love with, to root for, to worry about, and when dark forces enter her world, Kightlinger's storytelling abilities shine. Shot through with dramatic tension that is certain to keep readers turning the pages, it's a full, satisfying novel that will, at the end, leave you hungry for the next installment. --David Anthony Durham, award winning author of the Acacia series and Pride of Carthage Rebecca Kightlinger is a weaver of earth magic and a mixer of potions. As the timeless tale of the coming of age of Megge of Bury Down unfolds through the centuries, it offers readers a truth as unchanging as change: that accepting ourselves is the key to claiming our power. --Annie Finch, award-winning author of Spells, Among the Goddesses, and The Poetry Witch: Little Book of Spells Kightlinger's heroine rallies supernatural strength and all manner of healing arts to find her path toward protecting the books, the land, and most of all her fellow women . . . Readers will not forget the women of bury Down. --Elizabeth Searle, author of We Got Him and librettist for Tonya and Nancy: The Rock Opera Dr. Kightlinger was performing colposcopies for the Amerindian women of Guyana, South America, bathing in rivers, boiling the water, and sleeping on the ground in tents, when an accident to her wrist rendered her unable to continue her work and deposited her among the tribe of scribblers to which she now so richly belongs. This would be a masterwork as the culmination of a series, but for a first novel, projected into a saga of three, it is simply stunning. --Boman Desai, author of The Memory of Elephants and TRIO, a Novel Biography of the Schumanns and Brahms

Megge is a protagonist easy to fall in love with, to root for, to worry about, and when dark forces enter her world, Kightlinger's storytelling abilities shine. Shot through with dramatic tension that is certain to keep readers turning the pages, it's a full, satisfying novel that will, at the end, leave you hungry for the next installment."" --David Anthony Durham, award winning author of the Acacia series and Pride of Carthage ""Rebecca Kightlinger is a weaver of earth magic and a mixer of potions. As the timeless tale of the coming of age of Megge of Bury Down unfolds through the centuries, it offers readers a truth as unchanging as change: that accepting ourselves is the key to claiming our power."" --Annie Finch, award-winning author of Spells, Among the Goddesses, and The Poetry Witch: Little Book of Spells ""Kightlinger's heroine rallies supernatural strength and all manner of healing arts to find her path toward protecting the books, the land, and most of all her fellow women . . . Readers will not forget the women of bury Down."" --Elizabeth Searle, author of We Got Him and librettist for Tonya and Nancy: The Rock Opera ""Dr. Kightlinger was performing colposcopies for the Amerindian women of Guyana, South America, bathing in rivers, boiling the water, and sleeping on the ground in tents, when an accident to her wrist rendered her unable to continue her work and deposited her among the tribe of scribblers to which she now so richly belongs. This would be a masterwork as the culmination of a series, but for a first novel, projected into a saga of three, it is simply stunning."" --Boman Desai, author of The Memory of Elephants and TRIO, a Novel Biography of the Schumanns and Brahms

Author Information

REBECCA KIGHTLINGER holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Southern Maine's Stonecoast MFA program and is a certified Copyeditor and a member of the National Book Critics Circle. A fulltime writer and literary critic, she divides her time between reviewing books for the Historical Novel Society, reading fiction submissions for New England Review, and researching and writing the Bury Down Chronicles series. She carries out on-site research in Cornwall for each book of series. In her twenty years of medical practice as an obstetrician-gynecologist, she was privileged to care for the women of Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Guyana, South America. A Lifetime Fellow of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and a member of the American Association for the History of Medicine, she now studies ancient medicine, medieval midwifery, and the manuscripts and arts of the mystical healer. She and her husband and their pets live in Pennsylvania.

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