Tidelands, Philippa Gregory
Tidelands, Philippa Gregory
21 Rating(s)
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Tidelands

Bestseller

Author: Philippa Gregory

Narrator: Louise Brealey

Unabridged: 15 hr 30 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 08/20/2019


Synopsis

This New York Times bestseller from “one of the great storytellers of our time” (San Francisco Book Review) turns from the glamour of the royal courts to tell the story of an ordinary woman, Alinor, living in a dangerous time for a woman to be different.

A country at war
A king beheaded
A woman with a dangerous secret

On Midsummer’s Eve, Alinor waits in the church graveyard, hoping to encounter the ghost of her missing husband and thus confirm his death. Until she can, she is neither maiden nor wife nor widow, living in a perilous limbo. Instead she meets James, a young man on the run. She shows him the secret ways across the treacherous marshy landscape of the Tidelands, not knowing she is leading a spy and an enemy into her life.

England is in the grip of a bloody civil war that reaches into the most remote parts of the kingdom. Alinor’s suspicious neighbors are watching each other for any sign that someone might be disloyal to the new parliament, and Alinor’s ambition and determination mark her as a woman who doesn’t follow the rules. They have always whispered about the sinister power of Alinor’s beauty, but the secrets they don’t know about her and James are far more damning. This is the time of witch-mania, and if the villagers discover the truth, they could take matters into their own hands.

“This is Gregory par excellence” (Kirkus Reviews). “Fans of Gregory’s works and of historicals in general will delight in this page-turning tale” (Library Journal, starred review) that is “superb… A searing portrait of a woman that resonates across the ages” (People).

About Philippa Gregory

English born author, Philippa Gregory, received her degree in History from the University of Sussex, followed by a PhD in 18th century literature from the University of Edinburgh. Along the journey of her education, she discovered that she had an uncommon interest in the Tudor period. Using her history background, she first wrote The Other Boleyn Girl, which to her credit, was made into a TV drama, and followed by a major film.

Gregory has put much of her effort and personal money into a 20 year old charity that she founded. It is Gardens for The Gambria, that teaches school children to plant market gardens which are irrigated by the almost 200 wells that the author has funded. She is also a patron of The UK Chagos Support Association, a displaced people in the Indian Ocean.

Gregory was selected as the 2008 Edinburgh University Alumna of the Year. She lives with her family on a small farm in Yorkshire.


Reviews

3.5 stars rounded up. It’s a hard life for Alinor and her children who live on Sealsea Island, off the south coast of England, the tidelands “neither sea nor shore”. She’s a healer who grows herbs for medicine, delivers babies and works at times for the more well off residents as does her thirteen ye......more

The time is 1648, not an easy time to be a woman, especially a woman without a husband. Alinor is left a single mother of two when her husband goes out to sea and never returns. She ekes out a living as a midwife and herbalist, in a time when those activities were viewed with suspicion and accusatio......more

Goodreads review by Heidi

DNF More than halfway through and I had to return my copy to the library. A month later I realized, I’d forgotten I had even started it — besides my TBR list isn’t getting any shorter. Am I dying to see how it ends now that I’ve waited a month? Not really. I usually love Gregory’s slightly “guilty pl......more


Quotes

"A new series from Philippa Gregory is always a chance to do a happy dance. Louise Brealey's exceptional narration gives this title the life it deserves. In 1648, after his defeat in England's Civil War, King Charles is exiled to the Isle of Wight. Superstition and religious persecution permeate the tiny town and desolate tidelands of the region. One of the inhabitants is wise woman, herbalist, and midwife Alinor, whose husband, a fisherman, is missing. Looking for a spiritual sign, she goes to a cemetery, where she encounters James, a disguised Catholic priest. It proves to be a life-altering meeting. Brealey makes each of Gregory's incredibly detailed moments believable—from the treacherous tides and deadly intrigues to the dangers of just being human."