Menewood

Griffith follows up Hild with a transportive second volume inspired by the life of St. Hilda of Whitby (614–680), known for advising kings as an abbess and portrayed here as a canny royal leader and fierce warrior in the years before she’s recruited by the church. In the first installment, Hild was a precocious child; now, in 632, she’s 18 and recently wed to her half brother Cian Boldcloak, with whom she’s tasked to protect the highland of Elmet for their king and uncle Edwin, in whose court Hild was raised. Their lives are dictated by the constant threat of war, and by the end of the first act, Cian is killed in battle. Along with descriptions of bloody violence, Griffith colors in the customs and language of early medieval England (“Tide turns as æfen turns to niht,” a ship captain tells an impatient Hild while she’s on her way to a diplomatic mission in Colud). Though accounts of Hild’s vengeful battles drag on a bit too long, there’s no shortage of visceral prose (as Hild mounts her mare, Griffith writes: “She felt herself swell, blood coursing rich and thick in her veins, and her heart rose like a great bubble”). Admirers of the first bookwill not be disappointed. Agent: Stephanie Cabot, Susanna Lea Assoc. (Oct.)