With the facility of a prose artist, Brooks unflinchingly describes barbaric 17th-century customs and depicts the fabric of life in a poor rural area.
As deaths mount, however, grief and superstition evoke mob violence against "witches," and cults of self-flagellation and devil worship. The vicar behaves nobly as he succors his dwindling flock, and his wife, aided by Anna, uses herbs to alleviate their pain. When bubonic plague arrives in the community, the vicar announces it as a scourge sent by God obeying his command, the villagers voluntarily seal themselves off from the rest of the world. Anna works as a maid for vicar Michael Mompellion and his gentle, selfless wife, Elinor, who has taught her to read. Inspired by the actual town commemorated as Plague Village because of the events that transpired there in 1665–1666, Brooks tells her harrowing story from the perspective of 18-year-old Anna Frith, a widow with two young sons. With an intensely observant eye, a rigorous regard for period detail, and assured, elegant prose, Brooks re-creates a year in the life of a remote British village decimated by the bubonic plague. Discriminating readers who view the term historical novel with disdain will find that this debut by praised journalist Brooks ( Foreign Correspondence) is to conventional work in the genre as a diamond is to a rhinestone.
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