The Ruthless Yeomen

Isabel of Northfield should be content. Her lot in life is a decent one: Her parents, though villeins, work a fair living from the land of their Norfolk lord, and her modest dowry is enough to earn her husband a holding of his own.

But the flames of dissatisfaction burn within her, fanned by her grandmother’s whispers of free blood flowing in her veins. So when her husband dies and her overlord wants her to marry the sinister fisherman, Ufi, she rebels. Isabel has hopes of improving her lot through the Church, but when she throws herself on the mercy of the nearby Redesmarsh Abbey, her dreams end in disaster. Isabel cannot escape the bonds of serfdom and her dreams of freedom will be realized only in her kinswoman, Nicola, who marries Thomas Woodcarver: the first in a line of ruthless yeomen who will do whatever it takes to ensure they are never villeins again.

Beginning in the mid-thirteenth century and culminating in the Peasants’ Revolt, The Ruthless Yeomen is a powerful chronicle of individual lives caught up in the tide of English history: a novel that masterfully captures the turbulent spirit of its times