The Briton

Steeple Hill is launching a brand-new line of historical romances in February 2008 with Catherine Palmer's book The Briton. Catherine has won numerous awards for her writing, including the Christy Award, the highest honor in Christian fiction, and the Romantic Times Career Achievement Award, and this book written more than 25 years ago, is being published now, for the first time, as her 50th published novel!

Lady Bronwen, proud inheritor of the ancient ways of the Britons, had lost all she held dear. She had been widowed in war, then robbed of the ancestral home that was her birthright. And now her last hope was a stranger—one with whom she'd shared a single tender kiss.

First off, I have to confess a HUGE bias for the medieval time period and historicals in general, but being a Love Inspired title, I wasn't sure how that would affect the storytelling. I was curious, and happy to discover that Bronwen's slow conversion to Christianity was believable, and at no time were her pagan beliefs, held out as wrong or barbaric. I think that would have struck a sour note with me. She came to accept her God and newfound faith, and the comfort they gave her on a personal level and I respected her choice. Although I did get tired of her blue-lined black cape/mantle...I mean I know WHY she loved it, but sheesh, send it to the laundry a couple times , K? ...mind you it WAS the 12th century.... There were plenty of bad guy Vikings and nasty brutes in the story and some great plot twists that I didn't see coming, which transcended the somewhat standard storyline of good girl married off to hulking brute but having urges for hunky yet inconvenient, shining Knight.

Jayne

ps I also really preferred the cover on the advance copy I read showing Browen's fire and resolve standing alone and looking warrior maiden-like...nicer than the somewhat wimpy cover of her and Jacques in a cliched pose.

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"We cannot really love anyone with whom we never laugh." ~ Agnes Repplier