The Castle of Whispers

Book excerpt: This Goncourt Lyceens Award–winning novel is “a powerfully visualized magic-realist fable” of secrets, faith, and female defiance in twelfth century France (Kirkus Reviews). France, 1187. On the day of her wedding, the beautiful fifteen-year-old Esclarmonde scandalizes the court when she refuses to marry the knight chosen by her father, the brutish lord of the domain of Whispers. Defying her father’s wishes, she vows to give herself to God. To punish her willfulness, her father imprisons her in a cell adjoining the castle’s chapel. Instead of the peaceful solitude she sought, Esclarmonde finds in her cell the crossroads between the living and the dead. Walled in, with nothing but a single barred window connecting her to the outside world, Esclarmonde exerts a mysterious power over the kingdom. The virgin sorceress reaches a saint-like status, and men and women journey from far and wide to hear her speak. When even her own father falls under her sway, Esclarmonde persuades him to undertake an ill-fated war in the Holy Land.