A novel set in southern Italy in the 1100’s. Maria is the daughter of a robber baron who is first rescued from a Saracen attack, after which she is married off to the strongest and most ambitious of her rescuers.
“Your father is a robber, he’ll never be anything else. Roger just wants to be the King of the Robbers. But there’s something else to be done here. This castle’s at the throat of the whole region. The Saracens in the mountains have had no leader since Tib al-Malik was murdered. The King doesn’t interfere here, the Duke of Santerois hasn’t come south of the Roman Road in eight years. Some is going to make himself great here, why should it not be me?”
…”I’ll marry you.”
The next fifteen years are adventurous indeed, and Maria proves to be a strong, capable, intelligent asset to Richard’s ambitions. Not that she doesn’t have ambitions of her own, which often clash with his, right up until the very last page in one of the most satisfying and well earned conclusions I’ve ever read to an historical novel, with one of the very best last lines.
I read this novel when it first came out in 1974 (the book in the photo above, a first edition no less) and I remember how struck I was by Maria’s strength, determination and independence, all conveyed without any sense of anachronism. Maria is her own hero, but she is definitely of her own time and place. And she sure isn’t someone anybody, including her husband, wants to cross.
It’s finally available in e (ignore the cover art, which makes it look like a fantasy novel which it most emphatically is not) but there are also many used copies in paperback on online used bookstores.
Holland’s Wikipedia entry makes for interesting reading, too.
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I read this in high school and it made a big impact on me. I’d never read female focused historical fiction like this.
Big impact on me, too, and it’s as good a read today as it was when it was first published.