In this fresh approach to the history of the Black Death, John Hatcher, a world-renowned scholar of the Middle Ages, recreates everyday life in a mid-fourteenth century rural English village.
By focusing on the experiences of ordinary villagers as they lived — and died — during the Black Death (1345-50 AD), Hatcher vividly places the reader directly into those tumultuous years and describes in fascinating detail the day-to-day existence of people struggling with the tragic effects of the plague. Dramatic scenes portray how contemporaries must have experienced and thought about the momentous events — and how they tried to make sense of it all.
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Reader Reviews
Praise
Bookviews.com, July 2009
“This book uses a bit of fiction, mixing it with [Hatcher’s] vast knowledge to illuminate that catastrophe.”
“This book uses a bit of fiction, mixing it with [Hatcher’s] vast knowledge to illuminate that catastrophe.”
Curled Up with a Good Book
“This book screams ‘docudrama.’ One wonders if it will be made into a TV mini-series, so vivid is its novelistic story line yet accurate its information…What Hatcher has done, and done well, is to tell the tale of the Black Plague that swept through Europe in the 14th century from the viewpoint of a single English village.”
Cleveland Plain Dealer, 8/7/09
“The core of the story -- the plague’s effect on the lives of everyday people-- is as true as can be surmised, nearly 700 years later.”
