A mom who's had to work an extra shift gets home to find her daughter, a girl of about eight or nine, waiting for a story about a knightess. She tells a 14th- or 15th-century tale of Lady Eleanor. The church, with the tacit approval of Eleanor's husband, William, is cracking down on folk festivities and on the curative work of an aging midwife. Eleanor, with a new-found friend and servant woman, Gwenyth, who is the midwife's understudy, tries to save the woman from execution. Suspicion falls on the young women, and Gwenyth is in danger. Eleanor also finds herself pregnant, but fears childbirth and the life that awaits her baby. Does Eleanor have any choices?
—<jhailey@hotmail.com>