First published 1999
A woman mourning someone she loved creates an imagined past where she travels with medieval pilgrims through a mystical fifteenth-century landscape. Her companions include an elderly man, his pregnant daughter, a priest, a dying woman, and a leper. Together they encounter wonders that blur reality and fantasy: a mermaid washed ashore, a priest extracting madness from a woman's mouth, a wild man hiding in a mossy forest, and a ravenous woman who swallows a map whole. As the group moves through this land of saints and spirits, each traveler reveals their inner life through reflection and confession. The narrator's physical journey becomes something deeper, a search for renewal after devastating loss. Through her companions' stories and the strange miracles they witness, she begins to reconstruct not just an imagined past but a path toward healing in the present.
Genres: literary-fiction, historical-fiction, fantasy, magical-realism
Vibes: atmospheric, intimate, lyrical, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family, spiritual-journey
Setting: Fifteenth-Century Landscape
Period: Medieval
208 pages · Hardcover · Pantheon
Content warnings: death