The Master and the Maid: Heaven’s Pond Trilogy, #1
Nuremberg, May 1616. Two years before the outbreak of the Thirty Years War, the devastating conflict that would rend apart Catholic and Protestant Europe, feckless Willy Prutt barters his lover, Katarina, to Sebald Tucher, the descendant of a powerful patrician family. Katarina braces herself to be taken by force, but Tucher, a married man with freethinking leanings, surprises her by using gentle persuasion, taking her to his country manor, Heaven’s Pond, and charging her with the running of the estate. However, this task is not the only challenge facing Katarina: on her way to Heaven’s Pond, she encounters an archer, Hans-Wolfgang, who threatens to kill her unless she takes care of his newborn daughter, Isabeau. As Hans-Wolfgang tells the story, Isabeau’s mother was brutally murdered by Ralf, a Jesuit priest who, intent on stealing the child’s inheritance, now pursues her father. It is only a matter of time before Ralf descends on Katarina, promising that he will brand her a witch unless she surrenders Isabeau. When shortly thereafter, a brutal band of masked marauders attacks the house, the fates of Katarina and Isabeau hang in the balance.
The first part of a trilogy, the novel vividly reconstructs the atmosphere of 17th-century Franconia, its cities and countryside, and the book will captivate readers interested in the history of the great patrician families of Nuremberg, the Tuchers and the Imhoffs. Unfortunately, the reading experience is sometimes marred by the use of a language that is too modern and not representative of contemporary speech patterns and attitudes.
