Karen Brooks (1)

1405: The daughter of a wealthy merchant, Anneke Sheldrake suddenly finds her family bankrupted when her father’s ship is swept away at sea. Forced to find a way to provide for herself and her siblings, Anneke rejects an offer of marriage from a despised cousin and instead turns to her late mother’s family business: brewing ale.

Armed with her mother’s recipes, she then makes a bold deal with her father’s aristocratic employer, putting her home and family at risk. Thanks to her fierce determination, Anneke’s brew wins a following and begins to turn a profit. But her rise threatens some in her community and those closest to her are left to pay the price.

As Anneke slowly pieces her life together again, she finds an unlikely ally in a London brothel owner. Determined not only to reclaim her livelihood and her family, Anneke vows not to let anyone stand in the way of her forging her own destiny.… (meer)

ou guessed it - historical fiction that imagines the life of the Wife from Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. As you can imagine, Eleanor/Alyson is strong-willed, smart, sexual, and feminist. We hear about her five marriages, her rises and falls through the economic/social ladder, and her relationship with Chaucer.

A LOT happens - friendships, deaths, plagues, violence, love. Some times I was all in, and sometimes I was bored. It's a long book - over 500 pages, and I think it could have easily been trimmed. I also felt it suffered from a problem a lot of historical fiction from long-ago eras has - the mix of modern language and sensibilities with occasional old words/spellings and ideas. I think it's really hard to do historical fiction set in the 1300s in a believable fashion.

Overall, a fun ride, but I'm not sure who I'd recommend it to. I think serious Chaucer readers/scholars would be annoyed and find a lot of fault with this. And I think it was a bit too long and detailed for the more casual reader.… (meer)