Sinful Folk [Excerpt for Amazon Breakthrough Novel Contest]

4.5/5 ( ratings)

Semi-finalist and Quarter-Finalist.

SINFUL FOLK is the story of a desperate mother who carries a hidden secret and a terrible grief. In December of the year 1377, the village of Duns in the south of England suffered a great tragedy. Four young boys were burned to death in a house near the center of the village. It was the dead of winter, and the house burned to the ground. Although most English peasants of that era never traveled more than twenty miles from the place of their birth, villagers loaded the bodies on a cart and journeyed over 200 miles to London, to present the bodies before the King and demand justice. SINFUL FOLK is the story of that mid-winter journey through the eyes of Mear, a middle-aged former nun who has lived for decades disguised as a mute man, raising her son in secret in this isolated village. Through the course of the journey with the men of the village, Mear's story is told, her decades-long secrets come to light, and she is able to confront her son's killer. In the end, she is also able to reclaim the promise of her past, and the possibility of a new future as a noblewoman. Mear begins her pilgrimage in terror and heartache, and ends in triumph and redemption.