New book: The Needle of Avocation by Mark Baker

Hi, Brian.

This is to let you know about the publication of The Needle of Avocation, book three of my historical series Cuthbert's People, following The Wistful and the Good and St. Agnes and the Selkie.

The funny story here is that the opening scene was written several years ago, quite off the top of my head, at one of your Arowhon Pines retreats. I had no idea at the time what the rest of the book would be about, and it was probably three years before I pulled it out again. And yet, that passage, as I wrote it that day, survives virtually word for word as the beginning of The Needle of Avocation. A testament to the power of blue skies and clear water and an open fireplace, perhaps.

Here is the blurb:

Hilda is the second sister, the plain one, the overlooked, the put upon. She is also the finest needlewoman in Northumbria, though she distrusts anyone who tells her so. Her mother, Edith, was born a slave and seduced and married a thegn's son, a fact which embarrasses Hilda greatly.

Edith has tricked the local ealdorman into betrothing his only son and heir, Anfaeld, to Hilda, an arrangement unwelcome to everyone but Edith, and particularly to Hilda who would rather retire to a nunnery and spend her life in embroidery.

It is Hilda’s right to refuse the marriage, but the future of her mother and sisters may depend on her making the match, a role that should have fallen to her enchanting older sister Elswyth, who was kidnapped by vikingar three years earlier.

On the way to her wedding, Hilda meets a heartbroken king, his petulant child bride, an abbess who wrestles with a great torment, and the shy young man she is supposed to marry.

Feeling herself mistreated by them all, including her prospective mother-in-law, Hilda resolves to refuse the marriage and become a nun. But first she must solve the double enigma of what really happened to Elswyth, and why Anfaeld himself has not refused the marriage.

Regards,

Mark Baker

A copy of The Needle of Avocation is available here.

The next retreats at Arowhon Pines are coming up in June (see here) and in September (see here).

See all of Brian’s upcoming weekly writing classes, one-day workshops, and weekend retreats here.