Early last January, I posted a book review on Ernestine by Kate Reynolds. I loved the book so much that I ordered two copies to give to friends. I learned yesterday that Kate Reynolds' book has placed in the semi-finals in the annual BookLife Prize Awards. Ms Reynolds says she was told there were over 900 entries. She must be floating on a cloud to receive this kind of recognition for her first published novel, which was published independently. Judges are people from Publisher's Weekly and BookLife.
For those of you who missed reading the book earlier, I am repeating my review. Check it our on Amazon and order the Kindle Edition or paperback. Only 2.99 for the Kindle edition and 16.95 for the paperback. KindleUnlimited was free and may still be.
My earlier review:
Historical fiction brings the reader into another time period and can also tell a special story. Ernestine is Kate Reynolds's debut novel, but she is no amateur when it comes to crafting a fascinating story that draws readers quickly and holds them right up to the end using beautiful and descriptive prose.
When only a child in the early 1500s, Ernestine learned how to cheat at betting games and became a fine bunco artist at her father's tutelage. Once a young woman, she marries the man she loves, helps him run an inn in France, and is happy being nothing more than a loving wife. When Sebastian dies, she flees with documents he and his brother had hidden, documents that could be world-changing.
Ernestine takes the vows of a Clarissa nun and finds her way to an abbey in Spain near Granada. She knows she is being followed by a man who wants the documents she carried away. Hoping for safety in the abbey, she hides the documents but finds one problem after another amongst the 90 nuns. The Abbess is a kindly woman whose greatest love is caring for the olive groves the abbey owns. Keeping the accounts book is beyond her, and when she learns that Ernestine can work with figures, she begs the new nun to take over the Accounts Book. Reluctant to do so because of a problem with an account book in her past that might have led to her husband's death Ernestine demurs but is finally persuaded.
Add to the story a priest who plays a betting game with Mother Faviola every week, always winning, a young novitiate who is hopelessly in love with a young man, a festival and parade, which the Abbey has always won but is suddenly in peril, and Ernestine mixed up in all of it, and you have a very fine novel.
Taking place at the time of the Great Trials, or Inquisition, we see the effect on the everyday world of those whose vocation was often riddled with fear.
The supporting characters in the novel are realistic and also of interest to the reader. In particular, Luz, the oldest nun who is blind, draws Ernestine's story from her as they work together in the cellary bit by bit and relates many of her own. As they work with the abbey's foodstuffs in a series of caves, Luz tells Ernestine the Spanish term 'pundonor' which means 'point of honor' and is an integral part of Ernestine's story.
I enjoyed learning more about this period in history where no nun or priest was protected from the Inquisition. I found the nuns' language of the fans fascinating as well as the beauty of the Alhambra surrounding the nuns who toiled in the olive groves and merely subsisted rather than thrived.
This is a many-faceted tale that has much more than what I have written here. Peel the many layers as you read. Find it on Amazon with both a Kindle edition and a paperback. I look forward to reading more novels by Kate Reynolds.
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