Ellen's Comments: My daughter introduced me to Dorothy Dunnett’s books a few years ago, and since then I have been drawn to works set in the Renaissance period in Europe and the British Isles. Most of them have been written from the perspective of the royals and wannabe royals—in England, the Yorks and Lancastrians (and occasionally a Tudor). Figures in Silk weaves a tapestry of the lives non-royals—craftsmen, merchants, and the “invisible” working people—and gives us glimpses into some of the motivations behind the actions of the nobility.
The Wars of the Roses over, Richard IV is very comfortably settled in as king. Peace and prosperity are returning to the war-torn land. Prominent London silk merchant John Lambert arranges marriages for his two teenage daughters. Jane, 16, is married to an older, vindictive man, but soon becomes a mistress of the king. Isabel, 14, for the good of the family business, is given to the son of a widow, Alice Claver, who has, on her own as a Freedwoman, built a powerful and prosperous silk business. Isabel, however, is herself widowed within weeks of her marriage, and voluntarily apprentices herself to her mother-in-law to avoid returning to her father’s home. It is from Alice that she gains a passion for the luxurious fabrics and quickly acquires astute business skills. Through her sister’s influence, she gains favors, and commissions, from the royal family and goes on to become a rich and powerful Freedwoman merchant herself.
Story twists and intrigue at both commoner and royal levels keep you reading for the next amazing development, and the plot weaves through a love story that has you, like Isabel, ecstatic one minute and in despair the next, all the while reminding us of how truly blind love is. Status at GPL
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