Unabridged Audiobook
The legacy of Hildegard of Bingen is enormous. Much of her original writings have survived and even more has been written about Hildegard in a multitude of works and genres the last few decades. That left me a bit hesitant to read yet another work on Hildegard. However, this historical fiction novel is absolutely 5 stars. P.K. Adams treats Hildegard with the utmost respect. The novel beautifully describes Hildegard’s struggles from a young girl recognizing her deeply personal calling to the monastic life, to shaping this calling as an active Benedictine abbess, combined with the being one of the first female physicians within the male-dominated 12th C. The characters are well developed, the details are rich, the dialogue filled with personal thoughts and the political and cultural life of the 12th century is vividly written about. The novel never treats the intense historical backdrop too dense or fussy and I found myself becoming an engaged reader and caring about what was going on. This to me is the promise of a successful historical novel.
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