Review
"Spanning roughly sixty years in the late 12th and early 13th centuries, this story portrays the spread and persecution of the Cathar faith in France. Considered heretics, the Cathars preached pacifism, ordained women, and were accused of practicing black magic because of their skill with healing. Esclarmonde de Foix starts out as a headstrong girl in the Toulousian Courts of Love, but after an encounter with a Cathar elder, finds herself increasingly drawn to the faith, and after undergoing certain spiritual trials, she eventually finds herself acting as the leader of the Cathars, dedicated to God and her people. Throughout, she struggles with her love for a Templar knight who often rescues her in times of need, but neither can choose their love over their faith without breaking sacred vows.
This book is clearly well-researched, but more importantly for a novel, it tells a thoroughly engrossing story. As Esclarmonde struggles with her faith and the war sweeping her country, Craney explores issues of theology, a variety of historical events and characters, forbidden love, and the strength and strain of family ties through war. Some of the battle and persecution scenes are quite gruesome as the depictions are quite true to life, and at times the language is a little overblown, making some scenes difficult to follow. Overall, though, this is a well-written and compellingly told story of a little-known figure from medieval France.
This book would appeal to those interested in medieval French history and readers who were intrigued by some of the historical underpinnings of Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code, and it is a well-told epic story of faith and love." ----Ann K. D. Myers, The Historical Novel Society Review
From the Author
As the subtitle indicates, this is a work of historical fiction, not academic scholarship. In writing it, I took as my lodestar the admonition of historian Zoe Oldenbourg:
"If the centuries had preserved the work of some Catharist Vaux de Cernay, telling the deeds and gestes of his spiritual leaders, the miracles God had wrought on their behalf, and describing the grandeur of their work, then no doubt the Crusade would present a radically different appearance to us."
Implicit in this lament is the possibility, if not likelihood, that "history" has failed to provide us with the complete story of the Cathars. It thus falls to the historical novelist to imagine what might have happened, but cannot be proven.
As I detail more fully in my Author's Note, I have used suppositions, creations, interpretations, and certain variances from the few contemporaneous accounts and records of the Crusade. Readers who prefer their history remain untarnished and--and yes, perhaps at times even undistorted in the good-faith attempt--by the bending lens of fiction, who reject the possibility that medieval "facts" winnowed through the sieve of time may not be as reliable as one might wish, who find fanciful the suggestion that a persecuted religious group may not have divulged all of their esoteric practices in surviving writings, or who may be offended by certain venerated persons being reimagined or dramatized in a manner that conflicts with their own accepted history, traditions, and religious beliefs, would perhaps be best advised to pass by this novel.
There are two modern camps opposed in the interpretation of the Cathars and their beliefs. Many dismiss as New Age nonsense any Cathar involvement with the Holy Grail, mysticism, and the Tarot. Others see a thread running from more ancient esoteric traditions. Readers should study the arguments on both sides.
Jane Austen understood the plight of the historical novelist when she had her heroine in Northanger Abbey remark of history, "I often think it odd that it should be so dull, for a great deal of it must be invention. . ."
For independent-minded readers, who will take to heart my suggestion that they also consult other works on the Albigensian Crusade and draw their own conclusions about the controversies that still swirl from that period, I would ask you to approach this novel armed with the wisdom of author Tim O'Brien, who wrote about another war in his "How to Tell a True Story":
"A thing may happen and be a total lie; another thing may not happen and be truer than the truth."
