Hild

"A brilliant, lush, sweeping historical novel about the rise of the most powerful woman of the Middle Ages: Hild Hild is born into a world in transition. In seventh-century Britain, small kingdoms are merging, usually violently. A new religion is comingashore; the old gods' priests are worrying. Edwin of Northumbria plots to become overking of the Angles, ruthlessly using every tool at his disposal: blood, bribery, belief. Hild is the king's youngest niece. She has the powerful curiosity of a bright child, a will of adamant, and a way of seeing the world--of studying nature, of matching cause with effect, of observing human nature and predicting what will happen next--that can seem uncanny, even supernatural, to those around her. She establishes herself as the king's seer. And she is indispensable--until she should ever lead the king astray. The stakes are life and death: for Hild, her family, her loved ones, and the increasing numbers who seek the protection of the strange girl who can read the worldand see the future. Hild is a young woman at the heart of the violence, subtlety, and mysticism of the early medieval age--all of it brilliantly and accurately evoked by Nicola Griffith's luminous prose. Recalling such feats of historical fiction as Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall and Sigrid Undset's Kristin Lavransdatter, Hild brings a beautiful, brutal world--and one of its most fascinating, pivotal figures, the girl who would become St. Hilda of Whitby--to vivid, absorbing life"--

Nicola Griffith is a native of Yorkshire, England, where she earned her beer money teaching women’s self-defense, fronting a band, and arm-wrestling in bars. In 1993 she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. Her novels are Ammonite, Slow River, The Blue Place, Stay, and Always. Her writing has appeared in Nature, New Scientist, and the Los Angeles Review of Books, among other places. Her awards include the Tiptree, Nebula, and World Fantasy awards, the Premio Italia, and the Lambda Literary Award (six times)—most recently for her memoir, And Now We Are Going to Have a Party. Griffith lives with her partner, the writer Kelley Eskridge, in Seattle, Washington.