THE MARSH KING'S DAUGHTER Elizabeth Chadwick St Martin's Press US release August 2000 ISBN# 0-312-26491-7 {Click here to buy this book} If you've ever wondered what it was like to live in the Medieval times in England you have only to open the cover of any book

Miriel Weaver is sent to St Catherine's by orders of her stepfather. Her grandfather is dead and Nigel is now in brutally charge. Miriel is the bastard daughter of his wife's one night stand with a traveling minstrel, and an unruly stepdaughter at that. Marrying Miriel to God will get her out of his way and allow him to run the weaving business as he sees fit. After six months at the priory though Miriel is no closer to taking her vows as when she entered. It's when a mysterious man is discovered in the marshes near the priory that Miriel begins to plot her escape.

Captured at the aborted siege at Lincoln, Nicholas de Caen is being held prisoner by the guards transporting King John's regalia. While traveling across a reputed dangerous marsh the tide comes in quickly and unexpectedly and the wagon train cannot cross fast enough. The tide and quicksand are quickly swallowing everything in its path. Nicholas realizes that if he is to live that he must get to dry ground before he is also taken by the sea and sand. It's the packhorse carrying a chest of silver coins that nearly kills him as he struggles to save the treasure he knows will help to rebuild his life. Before he passes out on the marsh from exhaustion Nicholas is able to hide the chest, vowing to return for it when he's well.

Nicholas is shocked when he finds himself in a priory being nursed by Miriel and has to force himself to remember that this beauty has given herself to God. But when he finally leaves the priory, at the behest of the Mother Abbess in the wake of a scandal, he's not prepared to find that Miriel has followed him to the hiding place of the treasure chest. Miriel begs him to safely escort her as far as Nottingham and he reluctantly agrees. But after their first night there he realizes his mistake when he finds that she's disappeared into the night after stealing several pouches silver and the mysterious pearl studded crown once belonging to Empress Mathilda that was hidden at the bottom of the chest.

Both Miriel and Nicholas make their lives apart, starting over with the wealth from King John's silver chest, but their paths are destined to cross. And when they do, old feelings are rekindled, lust and anger, and new feelings are born, love and trust.

Once again, Chadwick transcends the genre with this extraordinary story. This is not a traditional romance but a well thought out, exhaustively researched and intensely involved literary masterpiece. Chadwick concocts believable characters and puts them in a thoroughly observable setting, gives them historical and fictional obstacles that bring them around to as perfect a climax as could be written. The title of the book, "The Marsh King's Daughter" is brilliantly tied in through an analogy of one of Aesop's Fables of the same name. The marsh where King John's treasure is lost essentially brands him the King of the Marsh. Miriel, the daughter of an environment she is born into, exemplifies the suppression from some of the men in her life and her struggle to escape.

I searched high and low in this book to try to find something that was off, something that didn't quite click. I came away with only one thing that I feel very strongly about. It is that this book is just not long enough! Even at just over 400 pages and as gloriously complex as it is, the pages of this book fairly flew through my fingers. As I read "the end" on the last page I couldn't help but scream, "I want more!" Whether you're a long time fan of Elizabeth Chadwick's work, or a first time reader, you'll be screaming the same thing at the end.