New Books In Historical Fiction

Many historical novels explore the highways and byways of Tudor England, especially the marital troubles of Henry VIII, which makes it all the more pleasant when an author approaches that much-visited time and place with a fresh eye. In her The Cross and the Crown series–which currently consists of The Altarpiece, City of Ladies, and The King’s Sisters—Sarah Kennedy looks at Henry’s roller-coaster search for marital happiness and male progeny from the viewpoint of a young nun cast out of her convent and flung into a strange interim state where she can neither practice her religion nor marry without the express permission of the king. We meet Catherine Havens in 1535. King Henry has recently declared the Dissolution of the Monasteries, and the local gentry sees a chance to increase its landholdings at the expense of Catherine’s convent–a development that her abbess in no way supports but cannot prevent. When the convent chapel’s large and valuable altarpiece goes missi