St. Margaret Clitherow is a life of the so-called "Pearl of York", who was pressed to death in 1586 after she refused to enter a plea in court after she was arrested for harboring priests. While it provides all of the necessary biographical details, it is definitely hagiography, and the author is very much on Margaret's side. The daughter and wife of leading figures in the city of York, Margaret had it all, but decided that her faith was more important. Nevertheless, she tried to protect her family from her actions at all costs—part of the reason she refused to plead was to avoid making her children testify at her trial. But her faith was the most important thing of all, and we learn a lot about how Catholics struggled to get by in the first decades of Elizabeth's reign.

An interesting book about an interesting person. Probably for Catholics only, because of its essentially polemical nature. For those looking for a more academic study of her life, there is Peter Lake and Michael Questier's The Trials of Margaret Clitherow: Persecution, Martyrdom and the Politics of Sanctity in Elizabethan England that I'm hoping to get to in the next few weeks. Highly recommended. ( )