"It's not often that a historical novel comes along that is ...

... at once period-appropriate, psychologically plausible -- and very, very difficult to put down. But Poor Banished Children, by newcomer Fiorella de Maria, fits the description. It tells the story of a mysterious castaway woman who washes up, half-dead, on the English coast in 1640. Her language is unfamiliar, but she is desperate to tell her story, which she finds a way to do in a confessional form that unfolds gradually over the course of the novel.

As a child in Malta, her family had cast her out, so she found refuge with a clergyman who educated her and trained her as a surgeon. Too literate, too headstrong, and much too independent for marriage to any man in her village, she begins the process of becoming a church anchoress -- living a life of service and prayer attached to a particular parish -- only to be kidnapped by pirates and sold into slavery before completing her final vows. Most of Poor Banished Children relates her trials and adventures, post-kidnapping.

Read the entire review, "Medieval Castaway", written by Theresa Civantos, on the Weekly Standard site.

Related Links:

• The Call and Craft of the Catholic Novelist: An Interview with Fiorella De Maria, author of Poor Banished Children: A Novel
• The Opening Chapters of Poor Banished Children: A Novel | Fiorella De Maria
• Website for Poor Banished Children | Ignatius Press