This an absolutely wonderful and inspiring book about the Black Plague.

Now granted, you may not be in the mood…or this might be perfect timing.

From the back blurb:  “When an infected bolt of cloth carries plague from London to an isolated mountain village, a housemaid named Anna Frith emerges an an unlikely heroine and healer…as her fellow villagers make an extraordinary choice: convinced by a visionary young minister they elect to quarantine themselves within the village boundaries to arrest the spread of the disease.”

As Oprah wrote:  “Year of Wonders is a vividly imagined and strangely consoling tale of hope in a time of despair.”

This was published in 2001 and based on an actual event.

The Black Plague has fascinated me ever since.  During one visit to London, I convinced my mother and daughter to go on a “Haunted London At Night” tour.  We went to the lower regions of an elegant bar to visit a very spooky and supposedly haunted cell from the days of “debtor’s prisons” and also tiptoed down to the basement of a definitely seedy pub that housed the ladies room where Jack the Ripper killed one of his victims.

My mother and my daughter were less than thrilled with this tour–aside from drinking wine in the fancy bar until the goosebumps left our arms.

But we also parked in back of a church where plague victims had been buried stacked on top of each other in the cemetery, which was still there.  Spooky, as cemeteries at night always are.

And nearby was a large empty round mounded field that once was known as a “plague pit”.

Yes, this was how I spent my 50th birthday.  I was mesmerized.

I’ve thought about this book a lot lately.  Even though I’ve purged my bookshelves many times, this novel has stayed with me.  I intend to read it again.

Here’s the amazon link if you’re interested in reading more about it.  It’s also $2.99 on ebay.  And free at the library if you have an e-book account.  Let me know what you think.