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| Geraldine Brooks |
As a child Anna lost her mother early and her father treated her badly. She is married at 15 to Sam, a miner for lead, the chief work of the village. They are happy and have two sons. Anna is also in service to the Bradfords, the landed gentry, and to the new rector, Michael Mompellion. Mompellion’s wife Elinor teaches Anna to read, as Anna loves language, and also about the herbs in her garden.
When her husband is killed in a mining accident, Anna takes in a boarder, Mr. Viccars, a tailor. Viccars orders a bolt of cloth from London, opens it and soon is dead from plague. He tells Anna to burn his belongings, but villagers come to take some of the clothing he has made. Thus plague spreads throughout the village.
Horrified, the Bradfords leave, but Mompellion convinces his church flock to quarantine themselves. He sets up a system of exchange at a boundary stone, where local gentry will supply them, if they do not leave. Everyone agrees.
Anna’s two sons die, one after the other. She is lost, wondering why she is still alive. Spending time in the churchyard, she sees people torturing the local herbalist/midwife and her niece, whom they call “witches.” They have consorted with the devil and brought the plague. They hang the younger woman and her aunt dies of consumption and exposure. Mompellion tries to stop them. “Do we not have suffering enough here.”
Because there are no longer midwives in the village, Elinor asks Anna to assist at a birth. She is reluctant, but successfully helps a boy to be born. Death is all around, however. Anna goes to ask her father for help, but he belittles her. Why does God take good people and leave evil ones like her father, she wonders.
Anna and Elinor become nurses to villagers while Mompellion ministers to their spirits. They go to the physic garden kept by the “witches,” trying to learn what they can. Anna experiments with poppies, lulling herself with lovely dreams, but then realizes she must be awake to help people. Working with Elinor gives her serenity. Elinor tells Anna her own story, of becoming pregnant out of wedlock. Mompellion saved her.
With Elinor’s determination and Anna’s knowledge, the two of them manage to save the mine of nine-year-old Merry, the last of her family, by extracting enough lead to fill a “king’s dish.” The miners’ barmote court also sentences Anna’s father for stealing, however, and he is left to die. The villagers all succumb to fear. Some take to flagellating themselves. Anna’s step-mother Aphra sells charms as the ghost of one of the “witches.”
The villagers begin meeting for church outdoors at a distance from each other. Mompellion realizes they should burn their possessions, which they do in July 1666, about a year after the plague began. After a few weeks they realize no one else has died. Anna envies the love between Mompellion and Elinor and rues her own lonely state.
Aphra has gone mad, however, after a harsh punishment and losing her last child. She arrives for the service of thanksgiving wielding a knife. Mompellion and Elinor try to soothe her, but she fatally cuts Elinor’s neck.
Mompellion is prostrate, all his strength gone. He throws down his Bible. Anna tries to take care of him, but after many weeks gives up. She goes out to his spirited horse and takes it for a ride. When she returns, Mompellion kisses her. He apologizes for his excessive grief. They sleep together, but when Mompellion tells Anna that he had held himself away from Elinor because of her sin and the need for atonement, Anna is horrified by his coldness.
Anna goes to the church, where she finds Miss Bradford. She begs Anna to go to her mother who is having a difficult birth. Anna succeeds in midwifing a little girl. But the daughter tries to drown the baby, a bastard. Anna says she will take the baby away and never come back. The Bradfords give her jewels, and Mompellion lets her take his horse, as she will be in danger. Anna spurns protection and takes the first ship, which is bound for Venice. After a difficult voyage, they end up on the north coast of Africa, at Oran.
It seems to Anna that she should continue to learn healing. She has also had a daughter of her own, by Mompellion. She is taken into the household of a compassionate doctor and helps him in healing women as she raises her two daughters. It is difficult for her to get used to the sun and light, but she insists she will never go back to England.
Geraldine Brooks was a foreign correspondent in recent places of terrible conflict, Bosnia, the Middle East, Africa. She wanted to write about the question of who people become under the worst circumstances. In making Anna a witness to what happens in her village which, even today, plays up its status as a plague village, Brooks is able to explore many dark places. The book is not easy to read, but it does delve into the question.
