Book 7 -
One of my favorite authors is Geraldine Brooks. I had not read her first book before this week, so was glad to pick up Year of Wonders: A Novel of the Plague - and it did not disappoint at all! It is a dark and depressing era (1666-67 - middle of England) but Brooks develops her characters and story so well that the ending was truly a surprise for me.

The story revolves around a young mother who loses her husband in a mining accident and is then asked by her parish rector to rent a room to a tailor from London. As the tailors business grows, bolts of fabric arrive from London in the small community along with rats and fleas bearing bubonic plague. The rector and his wife convince the town to close itself off from all other communities in an attempt to contain the disease. The ethical and moral questions posed by the situation, as well as the personal live of the community members, are woven into all facets of this story of caring and survival.

I am of the mind that all the things that the heroine, Anna, achieved and survived in this book would have destroyed a real person, but it makes for a great read. Brooks' subsequent novels, March and People of the Book are just as well-written, well-researched, compelling and entertaining. She does include things in all her novels that seem somewhat implausible for ordinary lives.