The Illuminator.

It is England, in the late fourteenth century, a time when the old feudal order is starting to crack, but the whim of a lord or the pleasure of a bishop still has the power to seal nearly anyone’s fate. The printing press has yet to be invented; books are rare and costly, painstakingly lettered and illuminated with exquisite paintings. nbsp; For Lady Kathryn of Blackingham Manor, a widow and mother trying desperately to safeguard her holdings without the dubious protection of her late husband, it is a time made both sweeter and more perilous by the arrival of a master illuminator called Finn.nbsp; Caught between the King’s taxes and the Church’s tithes, Kathryn strikes a bargain with the local abbot: she will take Finn and his pretty young daughter into her household in exchange for the monastery’s protection.nbsp; nbsp; Finn is working not only on approved church texts, but secretly---and dangerously---on a forbidden English translation of the Bible. As the hesitant friendship between Kathryn and Finn grows into a passionate alliance, wonderful new storyteller Brenda Rickman Vantrease brings us a glorious novel of love, treachery, faith, and redemption on the eve of the Renaissance.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Fiction, Nonfiction, Self-Help. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.