Lara's Library: A Song of Sixpence

A Song of Sixpence: The Story of Elizabeth of York and Perkin Warbeck

by Judith Arnopp

Review by Lara

Author Judith Arnopp has so generously offered a FREE PAPERBACK COPY of A Song of Sixpence for one lucky winner. Please see below for details

Drawing July 23, 2015

This drawing has been held and a winner announced at Facebook.

Please see new reviews for more chances!

We have a giveaway with every review!  

In the years after Bosworth, a small boy is ripped from his rightful place as future king of England. Years later when he reappears to take back his throne, his sister Elizabeth, now queen to the invading king, Henry Tudor, is torn between family loyalty and duty. Besieged by conflicting loyalties, Elizabeth experiences fear, oppression and unexpected love as the final struggle between the houses of York and Lancaster is played out.


Set against the court of Henry VII, A Song of Sixpence is a unique perspective on the early years of Tudor rule. Elizabeth, often viewed as meek and uninteresting, emerges as a resilient woman, proving that as much strength lies in endurance as in resilience.

Throughout history there are stories and legends that entice our imaginations. The tale of the two princes in the Tower is one of those. Another is the account of Perkin Warbeck. Even if you do not know the true facts or complete history of this time, nor the story of Perkin Warbeck, pretender to the English throne, A Song of Sixpence is an extraordinary book that will entice you to read further and set you on a road of discovery. 

This book is a wonderful journey through a most precarious and perilous chapter in the very beginnings of Tudor history. The format and characters, along with the storyline, are the result and testament of  penmanship and of great story-telling. I felt I was right there, in the presence and minds of the characters and time, more than just a voyeur looking in. In A Song of Sixpence the author does not attempt to prove that Warbeck is Richard, Duke of York, but has created a narrative based on a probability that he was.

The story begins with a chapter titled ‘The Boy’ in the autumn of 1483, London. It does not take too long for the reader to grasp what is happening, and to whom:

The Princes in the Tower

With a muffled curse, the man throws back his head but, keeping hold of his prisoner, he hurries onward down narrow, dark steps, turning one corner then another before halting abruptly. The boy hears his assailant’s breath coming short and sharp and knows he too is afraid.

The boy is Richard. His introduction begins as a prisoner in the Tower of London, taken in the night by a stranger, and then later treated as a slave: "'I hate being your servant,' he spits but he keeps his voice lowered… He owes his life to the man. His captor assures him that he is '...no one, nothing…until I say you are.'"


The author’s treatment of Richard is convincing. It makes me wonder, if he had succeeded in taking the throne, the Tudors would have ceased to exist and the lives of Elizabeth’s children would have come under threat, perhaps suffering the same fate as he. Through years of training and grooming in exile, he returns to claim his throne. One can only wonder, if this was Richard, how the trauma of his childhood, with all its losses, could ever make this broken boy into a king one day. Does he have his father’s qualities to be king? He has not yet been tested on the battlefield. Richard even doubts himself at times as the narrator suggests, when his chance to seize the throne arrives: "He had imagined that when the time came he would be brave, invincible, but now the moment is here, his overriding emotion is one of fear" and “I don’t even know how to be a king.” 

Richard is an endearing but sad figure who was accepted and celebrated in the houses and great courts throughout Europe, only to be ridiculed and humiliated before his demise at the hands of Henry Tudor. Richard at one stage laments about his role and wonders if his quest is worth the price. 

As a silent backdrop, the memories of Richard III and Elizabeth’s father, Edward IV, are interwoven between these two main characters, and adds to the validity of Warbeck’s assertion that he is the rightful king. Within the book's narrative Richard III, despite all he did to secure his own claim to the throne, is not portrayed as a monster, as most historical novels do. Although it was Richard who took the princes into the Tower, there is great disbelief in the characters that it was Richard who had killed or disposed of them. (The question of who killed the princes, if indeed they were murdered, remains one of history’s greatest mysteries.)                 

Henry VII & Elizabeth of York

The author presents Henry VII as a man whose claim to the throne was precarious. Arnopp’s Henry is wary of the successive pretenders to his reign, as he spends much time and effort in tracing the identity of each of these pretenders, especially Perkin Warbeck. This puts a considerable strain on the marriage of Elizabeth and Henry. The first Tudor king, Henry knows there are those who have a much better claim to the throne than he did.

Elizabeth had a greater claim to the throne than Henry Tudor. She knew her place, and her time as queen would come one day, even as the Battle of Bosworth was to decide the victor. "It is I, the eldest of my father’s daughters, who will be served like a pig on a platter to the triumphant king.” 

Henry Tudor eventually crowns Elizabeth Queen of England fourteen months after the birth of their first son, Arthur. Elizabeth has finally achieved her ambition to become queen. Elizabeth is often portrayed in history as a woman of no great strengths, other than her devotion to her family, and her inner relationships with her sisters and mother. Added to this, she has been contemporarily recorded as being “kept in subjection by the mother of the king” and by the king himself. Although Elizabeth is restrained in her role as queen, especially with Henry, it is only for fear for her children: "I watch him quietly. There is no point in interfering. He will not listen. He will go his own way, and if that entails the destruction of my entire family, it will not deter him."

As the tale unfolds Elizabeth is torn between her conscience and duty. She thinks to herself: "How can I trust him? How can I ever have faith in him when his duplicity is so transparent? I have an overwhelming urge to run away, but queens do not run away, and besides, there is nowhere for me to run."  Her courage shines through in her decisions to support her husband and king, and to protect her children from what she herself admits, that "her family had suffered." Elizabeth however, maintains hopes of romance with the harsh man she married: "Henry and I may have our differences but we share a deep love and joy for our children." I believe, as Arnopp states in her afterward, that "Elizabeth deserves more credit. There is as much strength in resilience as in resistance."

The relevancy, which Elizabeth faced in the Tudor times to today, in respect to being "bound to duty" and how a woman’s strength is measured, has not changed that much, even for a mere mortal woman like me. I loved Arnopp’s portrayal of Elizabeth, and although it seemed she was not a strong woman, I felt that she was. Elizabeth left a legacy: she had fulfilled her duty by filling the royal Tudor nursery with children, combining the houses of Lancaster and York, and as a result, creating the Tudor dynasty. I cried when she died in the end, even though I knew it was to be. Elizabeth of York will always be a heroine in my eyes.

Perkin Warbeck greeted by loyal subjects of 
Edward IV

Written with passion and empathy, Arnopp’s insight and extensive and faultless research shines throughout A Song of Sixpence. Arnopp has brilliantly mastered combining the story of Elizabeth of York, the eldest daughter of King Edward IV and Elizabeth Wydville, with the story of Perkin Warbeck, the most famous pretender to the throne. She cleverly uses alternating chapters between the points of view of Elizabeth and Richard (or ‘The Boy’ as the chapters are titled).  I enjoyed this refreshing format and Arnopp’s writing style. Using this layout, the author brings a voice and insight to the characters.

This is not just a novel of interpretation, but one of substance, with all that is known of Elizabeth and her new husband Henry Tudor, to the possibility of Perkin Warbeck being one of the princes taken from the Tower. A genuine page turner, A Song of Sixpence is brilliant in drawing the reader into the delicious historical detail and story, and as the author breathes life to the characters with her use of words, which are like vibrant colours on a canvas, she enables the reader to visualize the characters and ambience clearly. With empathic portrayals,  the reader experiences the intimate feelings of the characters, from their fears to their innermost thoughts and desires.

A Song of Sixpence is a stand-alone book in itself. One does not have to be an avid Tudor fan, historian, or enthusiast to enjoy this outstanding novel, which I would highly recommend to  readers of all ages and inclinations. I look forward to reading more of Arnopp’s novels and, having had the opportunity to review this masterly tome, Judith Arnopp is now on my list of favourite authors. I loved the book!

For your chance to win a FREE PAPERBACK COPY of A Song of Sixpence, simply comment below OR at this review's Facebook thread, located here. 

About the Author:

Judith Arnopp is the author of seven historical novels. The first three are set early in the historical calendar in Anglo-Saxon and Norman Britain; the latter books take place in Tudor England. She is currently working on a trilogy, The Beaufort Chronicles, which tells the story of Margaret Beaufort, mother of King Henry VII. Arnopp's books include:

Peaceweaver: Set during the run up to the Battle of Hastings

The Forest Dwellers: Set after the Battle of Hastings

The Song of Heledd: set in 7^th century Powys

The Winchester  Goose: At the Court of Henry VIII

The Kiss of the Concubine: A Story of Anne Boleyn

Intractable Heart: The Story of Katheryn Parr

A Song of Sixpence: The Story of Elizabeth of York and Perkin Warbeck

You can find out more about Judith and her work on her webpage or blog. Her books are available at Amazon.

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Lara is a new addition to The Review and currently working on a family memoir set in Ukraine and Australia. She enjoys gardening and reading Tudor history in her spare time, and lives with two crazy cats.

Rob Reviews: Wulfsuna (Wolf Spear Saga Book One)

Wulfsuna (Book I in The Wolf Spear Saga) by E. S. Moxon
Review by Rob Bayliss

Be sure to see below for how you could win a FREE COPY of Wulfsuna
Signed paperback!

Drawing July 21, 2015

This drawing has been held and a winner announced at Facebook.

Please see new reviews for more chances!

We have a giveaway with every review!

Wulfgar thought of all that had brought him here. Life was not as he would have wished it to be. With each bend in the road, Woden tested his resolve, poking a spearhead in his back to force him along a path he did not want to tread.

By 410 B.C., riven by dynastic power struggles, internal rebellions and gathering threats outside its borders, the Western Roman Empire was in a perilous state. For many years now the empire had clung onto a semblance of unity, its martial glory now a memory, as it got increasingly reliant on using Germanic mercenaries to defend itself. It was only a matter of time until these mercenaries were drawn into the dynastic power plays and began to wield political clout. It was in this year that the famous Rescript of Honorius (Honorious being the Western Roman Emperor) was issued instructing the inhabitants of Britannia to “look to their own defense.” 

In truth the province had already been doing just that. Thirty years previously Roman troops had been withdrawn from the north and west to counter the Visigoth threat to Italy itself. The remaining garrisons were stripped further as the-would-be emperor, Constantine III, endeavoured to build a separate Romano-Celtic Empire of Britannia, Gaul and Hispania. Alas Constantine was no match for the treacherous world of Roman politics and his quest to found his own dynasty came to nothing. And all the time there were raids by Picts, Irish, Scotti, Angles and Saxons. Little wonder then, that the Romano-British did as before and employed Angles, Saxons and Jutes to bolster their defense.

In E. S. Moxon’s Wulfsuna it is now 433 A.D.; we meet a Saxon tribe of the same name which has long traversed the North Sea as mercenaries and settlers. Their leader Wulfric once served Rome as a mercenary, but has a dream of returning and carving out a new home alongside his kinsmen, who stayed and married local women. He is joined in this endeavour with his temperamental allies, the Angles, but upon landing the plan goes awry.

Betrayed by the Angles, Wulfric is killed and his son Wulfgar is thrust into the unenviable task of fulfilling his father’s dream, despite the two branches distrusting each other. Wulfgar is a complex character, mourning his father, not adequately versed in the ways of a Headman and, perplexed by troubling dreams of witchcraft, he must unite the strands of the Wulfsuna, while all the time the Angles are a constant threat.

Meanwhile across the land a young British girl, Morwyneth, has recently lost her mother. She has the gift (or curse) of foresight and is mistrusted among her people. Inadvertently she becomes involved in treacherous Roman politics at the local level and is expelled from her tribe. In the wild, her dreams become dominated by a growing threat to her village, but also a vision of a young wolf…

The author has researched this period to a very high degree to bring this world to life. Dress, custom and beliefs of the time are well described. This is the cusp of when the province of Britannia began to culturally change to modern England and Wales. As well as historical fiction this has the fantasy element of the young seer’s dreams and the manner in which she is found by the tribe. The Wulfsuna fear the supernatural power of the Nix, which Morwyneth seems to exhibit, yet she is the means by which the two branches of the Wulfsuna can be united. There is also an element of the romantic novel here, as a marriage of convenience blossoms into love. This element avoids being clichéd and in some ways is a microcosm of the lands of Romano-Celtic Britain becoming Anglo-Saxon England.


Wulfgar came to understand his wife's affinity with the land and its magick; how she knew every leaf, every fruit and understood each animal and their cry. He felt the ground speak to him, its pulsing life-rhythm flowing through his feet like the roots of the mighty world tree, Yggdrasil.

The characters are well fleshed out; Wulfgar, one of the main point-of-view characters seems initially unpleasant, certainly lacking the charisma of his half-British friend Siegfrith, but he grows on the reader, mirroring his slowly ascending reputation as headman of the Wulfsuna. The other main character, Morwyneth, grows in confidence throughout the novel, both in her adopted tribe and in harnessing her gift. As this is book one of The Wolf Spear Saga it will be interesting to see what the future holds in subsequent sequels.

Author E. S. Moxon has so kindly offered a FREE COPY of Wulfsuna to one lucky winner. To be part of our drawing, simply comment below OR at this review's associated Facebook thread, located here.

About the Author:
Of Anglo-Italian heritage, E. S. Moxon's life has always involved languages and travel. Growing up she spent many family holidays visiting ancient burial sites and stone circles, exploring Britain's multi-cultural past. Her Italian grandfather's tales of the roguish adventures of his youth fuelled Elaine's passion for writing from a young age. She is currently working on  book two of the Wolf Spear Saga, which is set in 460 A.D. and follows the lives of the Wolf Sons 27 years after the end of Wulfsuna. A former holistic therapist and current member of the Historical Novel Society, she lives in the Midlands with her family.

You can learn more about Elaine Moxon and her projects at Twitter, Facebook, Goodreads, her blog and webpage. Wulfsuna may also be purchased at Amazon, Amazon UK or direct. 

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Rob Bayliss is a reviewer at The Review and is currently writing his own fantasy series. Information on his writing projects can be found at Flint & Steel, Fire & Shadow.

Note: This post has been updated to reflect the format of the giveaway as a signed paperback. 

Emma Interviews: Patricia Bracewell, Author of The Price of Blood

The Price of Blood by Patricia Bracewell

Interview by Emma Powell

Today, The Review extends a warm welcome to Patricia Bracewell, author of 
Shadow on the Crown and The Price of Blood.   

Be sure to comment at the review for The Price of Blood, located here, to claim your chance to win a FREE COPY!
Drawing July 14, 2015

Shadow on the Crown is the first book in The Emma of Normandy Trilogy and is a fabulous read. To celebrate the UK release of the second book, The Price of Blood, Pat has kindly agreed to be interviewed and we hope you enjoy the sneak preview into her writing world!

So, back to the beginning ... when did you realise you would be a writer?

I’d always been told at school that I was a good writer, and when I was about 10 I started to write a novel. I gave up after one page, though, because it was too hard. I couldn't think what happened next. I never really gave up on the idea of writing, though. After university, and during my years as a schoolteacher and long afterwards, I attended writing workshops and classes, trying to discover what it was that I really wanted to write. I wrote magazine pieces, personal essays, short stories, and finally I turned to the novel. That's when I realized that I was a novelist. I discovered again that it was very, very hard, but this time I didn't give up.

Where and why did your interest in Emma of Normandy begin?

I was in the middle of writing my second romance novel (yes! I wrote two of them and they will remain forever unpublished), and after 10 years of working at writing romance I was coming to understand that it was the wrong genre for me. So I began to consider historical fiction because I'd always loved it, and my antennae were up as I considered different historical periods. This would have been in about 1995. I spotted an online reference to a queen of England who'd married two different kings, yet I'd never heard of her. So I began to research Emma, and the more I learned about her, the more fascinated I became. It would be another 12 years before I felt confident enough with my knowledge of the history to actually begin writing my first novel about Emma, Shadow on the Crown.

You mention in your author's note how sparse the evidence is. How difficult did you find researching the political environment Emma moved around in?

Researching the political environment wasn't difficult because scholars have gone over the chronicles, the charters, the laws, the sermons and everything else that was written down with an eye to understanding the politics and events of the time. Professor Simon Keynes, for example, has drawn some fascinating conclusions about alliances among Æthelred’s nobles by studying the order in which their names appear on documents produced at meetings of the king's council - that's how detailed the research is. No, it's what women were doing in the midst of all this that was difficult to discern. Professor Pauline Stafford's books and many journal articles - on Emma, on Anglo-Saxon queens, on medieval women - have been invaluable for that, but sometimes getting my hands on journal articles is difficult, even though I live within a mile of the University of California at Berkeley and its world-class research library. It's like a treasure hunt - looking for tidbits of information in journal articles even when the journals are on the shelf - and sometimes they are not. It can be quite frustrating. And of course, even royal women's lives were barely documented, so it's like trying to find the proverbial needle in a haystack.

And the same question in regard to your characters - were they difficult to  ‘flesh’ out?  Especially the minor characters, for example, Athelstan’s siblings? 

Fleshing out the minor characters is where the fiction part of historical fiction comes in, and it’s great fun. Characters about which we know very little are golden because an author can use them as needed within, of course, the bounds of our historical understanding  of the character. One wouldn't make Edmund Ironside a bookish scholar, for example. We know almost nothing about Athelstan's other siblings, and what we do know is vague. We know who his sisters married, for instance, and when. Given that tiny bit of knowledge, I drew them as youngsters in the first book and adolescents in the second, relying on my own ideas about family dynamics to to imagine how they might have interacted with each other and with Emma. Every minor character, whether they are real or whether I've made them up, had to be imagined in terms of his or her relationship to Emma. 

Do you ever use anyone you personally know to help with characterisation?

Not consciously except, sometimes, for appearance alone – hair color, height, that sort of thing. I have photographs of every character to help me with physical description although, in most cases, they are not of people I know. They're just pictures of faces I've found where I think, Ah, that's Godwin or That's Thorkell. Do other writers do that? I don't know.

Authors often mention how their characters come alive whilst writing and often the story that's playing out directs itself. Did you find this with yours? After all, we're talking some powerful players and world-changing events here!

I suppose it happens in the sense that I put characters together in a scene and, knowing who they are and what they want, I let them interact. I usually have a pretty good idea of how I want the scene to end when I start to write it, but I'm not at all clear about how the characters and I are going to get there. We work through it together. 

The Price of Blood is the second book in The Emma of Normandy Trilogy. It is easily read as a stand alone but did you know from the beginning her amazing story was too much for just one book?

I did! I knew from the start just how much of Emma's life I wanted to cover and that I could not do it in a single novel because I wanted to explore in some depth the events that she experienced. I knew where the first novel would end, where the second novel would end (I was wrong about that; I couldn't get there) and where the third novel would end. Sort of. Still pondering that last bit. 

Do you have a writing timetable you adhere to, especially when you have deadlines to meet? Or do you write as and when?

Years ago, when my sons were young, I wrote when I could. Once they were in college I could really focus on writing as a job, and that's when I began Shadow on the Crown. I wouldn't call it a writing timetable, but I'm at my desk writing, researching or promoting most of every day. 

Any writing habits that help? A certain room/time, furniture a certain way, for example? And is it long hand or is it straight onto the computer?

I have an upstairs office in my home where I write. It's a big room and all my research materials are in my computer or on shelves (or on my desk, or on the nearby bed, or on the floor around me depending what I'm working on). My desk has three levels and a huge worktop which I love. I write straight into the computer, although when I'm editing I frequently print out pages and go over them with a pen, crossing out and making additions as necessary.

Finally, which most of us avid fans of Queen Emma would like to know, when can we expect book three?

That's impossible to answer because it depends on too many variables - how fast my brain works being one of them. I can tell you that there will be an academic conference in London next summer on Æthelred and Cnut, and presumably there will be papers delivered on Emma as well. So I will be there to glean all the latest academic theories about the events that will take place in my third book. I hope to already have a draft of a good chunk of the novel completed by then, but I expect there may be quite a bit of revising after that. I've been advised by other authors that the third book in a trilogy has to be FANTASTIC. So that's what I'm aiming for, however long it takes. 

Many thanks to Patricia Bracewell for her wonderful answers and for taking the time to be interviewed.

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About the Author:

I was born and raised in Los Angeles and spent much of my childhood curled up on a sofa with my nose in a book. Usually it was a novel set in England, although why someone who grew up amid Southern California's dry hills and sunshine would be so drawn to stories set in England's wet, green dales is still a mystery, but there it is. We're often drawn to what we don't have, I suppose.

In college I majored in English literature; [t]hen it was back to California and graduate school where I earned a Master's degree and a California teacher's credential. In the midst of family life I was actively studying the process of writing fiction, something my college courses had not really addressed. Then one day (this is the Once Upon a Time part) I came across an English queen whose name was completely unfamiliar to me. Intrigued, I began to research and began to write the novel that would become Shadow on the Crown. It is the first book in a trilogy and The Price of Blood its sequel. Currently I am hard at work on book number three. It seems I've come full circle - my mind in England somewhere, wandering an ancient, green, Anglo-Saxon landscape while I sit here in California with my nose planted firmly in a book. 

You can learn more about Patricia Bracewell and her books at her website and Facebook page. 

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Emma Powell has been reviewing for us since The Review's debut. She has since joined the admins team and you can find more of Emma's scribblings on her blog here.

Emma Reviews: The Price of Blood

See below to learn how you can win a FREE COPY of 
The Price of Blood
Drawing July 14, 2015

This drawing has been held and a winner announced at Facebook.

Please see new reviews for more chances!

We have a giveaway with every review!

Emma must protect her only child without abandoning her noble position. And her inner conflict, between maternal instinct and royal duty will be played out against the dramatic and bloody struggle for Britain’s rule

Well, that blurb alone should warn you. Warn you that you need to organise your life around reading a story where fact and fiction dovetail: a seamless tale of brutality and hardship one can only imagine.  And the author has certainly imagined ...

The Price of Blood is the second book in the trilogy following the enigmatic Queen Emma, the Norman bride of the English king Ethelred. The first book, Shadow on the Crown, covers the years 1001 - 1005 and introduces us to a young Emma embarking on her marriage to King Ethelred and her new life in England. This second book however, can be read as a stand alone and covers the years 1006 - 1012.  This may seem like aeons into the past but it is pitiful that this period of English history isn’t taught more in schools or discussed more, for surely it is an era of disruption, upheaval and hardship that we, in our modern world, cannot begin to even comprehend. The land was being ripped asunder by Viking invaders, fighting earls, mistrust, anger, greed and dark energies. It is thanks to stories like this people become aware England did actually have a history before 1066 and just how enthralling and real that history was. Not always pleasant but history nonetheless.

The novel picks up with Emma dealing with being treated as an outsider after the death of one of the king’s sons, against a backdrop of famine, death and invasion. Tense. Terse. The ensuing story doesn’t drop a stitch of this thread until ... well, the end.  

The Price of Blood resourcefully divides into sections via quotes from the Anglo Saxon Chronicles with subsequent chapters unfurling the story to follow that particular quote. What I was pleased to discover was the fact there are no gaps in between these sections, no feeling of a jagged story or stuttering paragraphs. The tale is told by differing points of view on occasion but this is relevant, adequate and contributes to depth of character and telling of the story. 

The author writes with a certain aplomb that is a requisite when composing a novel of this calibre. It is not an easy story - for a start, it is a rarely explored era and and the author’s note at the end clearly explains there is actually very scant information available to research. Whilst we may have the Anglo Saxon Chronicles to fall back on, there are still evidential gaps in history. These gaps have been sublimely imbued by the author’s imagination and that’s the fantastic bit; you cannot tell fact from fiction. The story ebbs and flows so naturally, I really would have believed Emma and her stepson Athelstan loved each other. I hope they did! It is this interspersion of imagined events that adds a softer, emotional depth to a thriller, a mystery, a murderous historical novel. 

In this second part of the trilogy we see a subtle but definite shift in Emma, the foundations of the great queen - great person even - that she becomes. The author has masterfully weaved the nuanced character of Emma from page one until the climatic end of the novel amidst a deadly cast of characters that would be enough to drive any sane person over the edge! Emma is just an example of how strong the women must have been to survive in what was most definitely a man’s world. This lady was right there at the top of power politics and played it well for her own sake as well as the safety and well being of her children, even when that meant being parted from them. As for her eldest, Edward, this novel begins to explore the elements of his personality that came to the fore when he was king in later years. Not necessarily good ones either. I am hoping there will be more of their rocky relationship in the third instalment.

Thanks to the professional prose of the author we can ride these emotions with Emma: despair at parting with her children to the ultimate power play at the end. We can feel the desperate state of the country, smell the camp fires of the invaders and by the end of it all, you will feel you know the Viking players personally! It is a book that ignites one’s imagination, firing a need to pursue one’s own research and learn for ourselves just how clever and tough Queen Emma had to be. She is a historical character worthy of having a great story told and I believe this book, this trilogy, to be it. 

Quite simply, a wonderful and highly recommended read.

Author Patricia Bracewell has so graciously offered a FREE COPY of The Price of Blood for one lucky winner. To get your name in the drawing, simply comment below or at this review's associated Facebook thread, located here. 

About the Author:

I was born and raised in Los Angeles and spent much of my childhood curled up on a sofa with my nose in a book. Usually it was a novel set in England, although why someone who grew up amid Southern California's dry hills and sunshine would be so drawn to stories set in England's wet, green dales is still a mystery, but there it is. We're often drawn to what we don't have, I suppose.

In college I majored in English literature; [t]hen it was back to California and graduate school where I earned a Master's degree and a California teacher's credential. In the midst of family life I was actively studying the process of writing fiction, something my college courses had not really addressed. Then one day (this is the Once Upon a Time part) I came across an English queen whose name was completely unfamiliar to me. Intrigued, I began to research and began to write the novel that would become Shadow on the Crown. It is the first book in a trilogy and The Price of Blood its sequel. Currently I am hard at work on book number three. It seems I've come full circle - my mind in England somewhere, wandering an ancient, green, Anglo-Saxon landscape while I sit here in California with my nose planted firmly in a book. 

You can learn more about Patricia Bracewell and her books at her website and Facebook page. 

Be sure to tune in tomorrow for Emma's interview with the author!

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Emma Powell has been reviewing for us since The Review's debut. She has since joined the admins team and you can find more of Emma's scribblings on her blog here.

Richard Reviews: Chasm Creek

Chasm Creek by Patricia Grady Cox
Review by Richard Abbott

See below to find how you can win a FREE signed paperback copy of Chasm Creek

Drawing July 8, 2015

This drawing has been held and a winner announced at Facebook.

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It is a very long time since I read a Western. Back in school we had Shane as a class book, and from the same era (and I'm showing my age here) I was a keen watcher of the two television series The Virginian and The High Chaparral. But since those long-ago days I think I have only encountered the Western genre in films. To this British reader, coming across placenames like Rio Verde or Yuma evokes a feeling of going into a fantasy land, where anything might happen.

So it was with an entirely appropriate sense of riding into the unknown that I started Chasm Creek, by Patricia Grady Cox. There were familiar elements that you meet almost at once. There is the mysterious man with the shady past, the abandoned wife struggling to make ends meet for her family, the lawman balancing his sense of natural justice with the pedantic legalism of "wanted" posters, Indians of several kinds, the optimistic prospectors hoping to strike lucky, and a whole mixture of diverse individuals making up the rest of the small town. There are motives of hate, love, revenge, self-sacrifice, over-protectiveness and partnership. The human environment was intricate and intriguing.

What I had not expected was so much enticing description of the natural world. The untamed beauty of the region comes over vividly in the writing, and successfully imparted a delight in these days of wildness.

Mounds of brittlebush dotted the incline. Dried stems once held flowers, but now burned naked, stabbed through clusters of gray-green leaves. Waxy creosote glistened in the harsh light as the sun climbed across the sky's bleached dome.


or...

When the clouds parted the desert's drab browns and greens had been replaced with splashes of red, vermillion, ochre, olive, yellow. Flat land, soaring monoliths, all a rainbow of colors. Directly below him the ground opened in a deep gash. A clear turquoise stream ran through it and a spindly rock formation towered almost to the top of the surrounding cliffs.

Thinking back, I should have expected this, as the old TV shows were full of spectacular sunsets and desert vistas alongside the human interactions. Apparently my adult appreciation noticed much more than my childish eyes had ever done. Here, the stern vividness of the land throws into stark perspective the actions of the men and women who live in it. Several of the characters have family ties back in the softer, safer states on the Eastern Seaboard, and could easily return there. However, surrounded by a natural world like this, one can entirely understand why they do not go back.

There are, of course, differences in this plot from the ones I remember from childhood. The Native American groups are presented in a much more diverse and compelling way than used to be the case. In particular, their connections with the land - for both good and ill - are an important feature of the novel. The world of the dead, of dreams, and of spirits is both accessible and elusively remote. People's motivations are more complex and more real. Happy endings are elusive. 

On a technical level, the book is well presented and prepared. For my taste I would have preferred a few more commas here and there to help readability, but this is a minor issue.

The heart of the book is not its technical presentation, but the way in which the human story draws you into the vastness of the western landscapes. You emerge from this book with a sense that the world is very large, and that with a little perseverance, a person might find all manner of beauty in it.

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About the Author:

At Canyon de Chelly on the Navajo reservation
in northeast Arizona, overlooking the canyon
and Spider Rock

Patricia Grady Cox is a member of Western Writers of America, Women Writing the West, the Association of Personal Historians, and a writers’ group dubbed The Snakebite Six. Her nonfiction work has  appeared in magazines, newspapers, and as ghost-written memoirs. Her love of the southwest—the landscape, the history, the culture—infuses her work with authenticity; she is becoming known for her ability to transport readers to the old west and immerse them in the time period so completely "you can smell the dust." Originally from Rhode Island in the U.S.A., she moved to Arizona 24 years ago and currently lives in Phoenix. For more  information, to view the Chasm Creek book trailer, and read reviews, visit her website or check out her Amazon author page.

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Richard Abbott is the author of In a Milk and Honeyed Land and Scenes From a Life. He can be found at his website or blog, on Google+, Goodreads, Facebook and Twitter.