A Book Sense Pick!

THE BURNING TIME
BY ROBIN MORGAN
ISBN: 193363300X
$15.00
Available March 1, 2006

Robin Morgan’s novel The Burning Time may be about the Inquisition—the guts of it we never learned in school—but it’s also frighteningly relevant today. And it would make a hell of a movie.   
      —JANE FONDA

The Burning Time is typical of Robin Morgan’s work: beautifully written, passionate, always interesting. It’s also rich in splendid imagination—a quality very rare in American fiction writers nowadays.
      —GRACE PALEY

A novel based on the true story of the Inquisition’s arrival in Ireland, and one extraordinary woman’s fight against it.

This riveting tale of the struggle for the soul of a country—drawn from actual court records of the first witchcraft trial in Ireland—is the exciting story of one extraordinary noblewoman, Lady Alyce Kyteler.

When the Catholic Church brings the Inquisition—also known as The Burning Time—to Ireland, Lady Alyce refuses to grant the Church power over her, her lands, or her people, and refuses to stop the practice of The Old Religion. She is declared a dangerous heretic by an ambitious emissary of the pope—who stakes his future on bringing her to heel. To lose the battle with Lady Alyce, he tells his superiors, is to lose all of Ireland.

But Lady Alyce is just as determined to fight back against the invaders’ injustice, its forced imposition of a new religion, and its blatant land grab. After she outmaneuvers her rival in a court trial, there is no return: Against the penalty of being burned at the stake, she risks all to protect her people, her faith, and her beloved Ireland. Battle plans are laid, and what ensues is a vivid account of an astonishing but little-known historic figure and a gripping tale of bravery, treachery, guile, and redemption.

photo: Blake Morgan

Award-winning poet, novelist, journalist, and editor, Robin Morgan has published 20 books, including six books of poetry, three of fiction, and the now-classic anthologies Sisterhood Is Powerful, Sisterhood Is Global, and Sisterhood Is Forever.

Her books include the novels Dry Your Smile and The Mer-Child; the nonfiction The Word of A Woman: Essays, The Anatomy of Freedom,Saturday’s Child: A Memoir and the best-selling The Demon Lover: The Roots of Terrorism. Her most recent poetry books are Upstairs in the Garden: Selected and New Poems, and A Hot January: Poems 1996-1999.

One of the founders of contemporary US feminism, she has also been a leader in the international Women’s Movement for 25 years.