The Book of the Maidservant, Rebecca Barnhouse
The Book of the Maidservant, Rebecca Barnhouse
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The Book of the Maidservant

Author: Rebecca Barnhouse

Narrator: Susan Duerden, Rebecca Barnhouse

Unabridged: 6 hr 44 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 10/27/2009


Synopsis

“A funny and wise book about friendship, loyalty, and love.”—Karen Cushman

Johanna is a servant girl to Dame Margery Kempe, a renowned medieval holy woman. Dame Margery feels the suffering the Virgin Mary felt for her son but cares little for the misery she sees every day. When she announces that Johanna will accompany her on a pilgrimage to Rome, the suffering truly begins. After walking all day, Johanna must fetch water, wash clothes, and cook for the entire party of pilgrims. Then arguing breaks out between Dame Margery and the other travelers, and Johanna is caught in the middle. As the fighting escalates, Dame Margery turns her back on the whole group, including Johanna. Abandoned in a foreign land where she doesn’t even speak the language, the young maidservant must find her own way to Rome.

Inspired by the fifteenth-century text The Book of Margery Kempe, the first autobiography in English, debut novelist Rebecca Barnhouse chronicles Johanna’s painful journey through fear, anger, and physical hardship to ultimate redemption.

About The Author

Rebecca Barnhouse teaches and writes about medieval topics and children's literature set in the Middle Ages. She lives in Youngstown, Ohio.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Sana on February 24, 2019

In olden times people went on assorted pilgrimages to Italy or Palestine or other destinations the hard way, walking and carrying their belongings, and sometimes they would have servants who were expected to take the road and fetch and carry and cook and wash thus making double the excruciating effo......more

Goodreads review by Jo on June 29, 2019

Johanna is a servant to Dame Margery Kempe in the Norfolk town of Lynn. When Kempe decides to set off on a pilgrimage to Rome, she takes Johanna with her. Kempe is, obviously, famous for her piety and the memoirs she wrote (well, dictated to a monk) in the medieval era. This is a fictionalised accou......more

Goodreads review by TheBookSmugglers on April 24, 2012

In the 1400s, Dame Margery Kempe left England on a pilgrimage to Rome. Her account of that and other pilgrimages as well as her conversations with God (Dame Margery was considered a Holy Woman) was published as The Book of Margert Kempe and is considered to be the first official autobiography in the......more

Goodreads review by Jessi on August 30, 2011

First line: "My mistress says you shouldn't stare into the fire lest the devil look out at you from the flames." Between Connie Willis' Doomsday Book, Geraldine Brooks' Year of Wonders, The Mistress of the Art of Death series, and this book, I am fast developing a passion for historical fiction set i......more