A Vision of Light: A Margaret of Ashbury Novel

The first book in the series, this bestselling novel introduces Margaret of Ashbury, a fourteenth-century Englishwoman with mystical abilities Margaret of Ashbury wants to write her life story. However, like most women in fourteenth-century England, she is illiterate. Three clerics contemptuously decline to be Margaret's scribe, and only the threat of starvation persuades Brother Gregory, a Carthusian friar with a mysterious past, to take on the task. As she narrates her life, we discover a woman of startling resourcefulness. Married off at the age of fourteen to a merchant reputed to be the Devil himself, Margaret was left for dead during the Black Plague. Incredibly, she survived, was apprenticed to an herbalist, and became a midwife. But most astonishing of all, Margaret has experienced a Mystic Union--a Vision of Light that endows her with the miraculous gift of healing. Because of this ability, Margaret has become suddenly different--to her tradition-bound parents, to the bishop's court that tries her for heresy, and ultimately to the man who falls in love with her.

• | Author: Judith Merkle Riley
• | Publisher: Crown Publishing Group (NY)
• | Publication Date: May 23, 2006
• | Number of Pages: 448 pages
• | Binding: Paperback or Softback
• | ISBN-10: 0307237877
• | ISBN-13: 9780307237873