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About Mirabilis
Product Description In fourteenth-century France, Bonne Mirabilis, a woman born "God's bastard" and the wet nurse to the wealthiest woman in town, discovers that she alone holds the key to saving the desperate, starving inhabitants of a village under siege. 15,000 first printing. From Publishers Weekly Sprawling, spiritual and crudely sensual, Cokal's debut novel is neither for the weak of heart nor the faint of stomach. In 14th-century France, in the village of Villeneuve, a town beset by plague witnesses a miracle: a young virgin takes her first communion and levitates above an awestruck crowd. But Blanche the Astonishing goes from saint to pariah when the girl bears an illegitimate child nine months later and refuses to name the father. At age 12, that child, Bonne Tardieu, witnesses her mother's imprisonment and immolation at the hands of an angry clergy. She grows up to be a wet nurse, but business is bad for an outcast with only a devout sculptor and a troubled dwarf as friends. Bonne's life changes when she catches the eye of Radegonde Putemonnie, the town's wealthiest woman, who is pregnant with her dead husband's child and stands to inherit his fortune only if she can bear an heir. Radegonde selects Bonne as her wet nurse, which means ample access to food at a time when the rest of the besieged villagers are starving. Bonne shares her good fortune, allowing the townspeople who rejected her to suckle at her always-flowing breasts. When a series of coincidences lead to the mysterious appearance of a Madonna sculpted in Bonne's likeness, the villagers hail her a saint and Radegonde a witch. Bonne is perplexed not only by her sudden change in social status but by her very unsaintly attraction to the seductive Radegonde. A visceral, absorbing account of medieval life from the perspective of its outsiders, Cokal's unsettling novel is rich with passions both religious and sexual and with an awareness of the occasional fine line between the two. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc. From Library Journal Bonne Mirabilis is on her own in the medieval village of Villeneuve. Her mother, believed by some to have conceived Bonne immaculately, has been burnt as a heretic. Her grandmother is no help, having walled herself up in the church as a hermit on learning of her daughter's pregnancy. Alone in the world and soon pregnant with a fatherless child of her own, Bonne becomes a wet nurse, a good living for a young unmarried woman in 14th-century France. The strange thing about Bonne, however, is the sheer abundance of her milk and the healing powers it seems to have. Soon she finds herself in the employ of a mysterious and wealthy pregnant widow, who begins feeding Bonne rich food to ensure her unborn child's future diet. The feasts continue even after Villeneuve is besieged by the English and the rest of the town begins to starve. Bonne becomes frustrated with her mistress's refusal to open her substantial larders to the town, and so she takes matters into her own hands and feeds the townsfolk with her milk. This beautifully crafted story about miracles and belief will not soon be forgotten. The characters are wholly believable, and the medieval world is presented in all its rich brutality and color by an author who knows every detail of the period. One expects to stay up late to finish the latest John Sandford, but a books about medieval wet nurses with dwarfs and monks and exotic, sapphic witches? Yet readers will, for it is that compelling. Recommended for all fiction collections. Wendy Bethel, Southwest P.L., Grove City, OH Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Booklist In 1372 a French village is under siege by the British. The citizenry are starving to death, when a miraculous event occurs. A young woman, Bonne Tardieu, who has worked in the past as a nitpicker, laundress, whore, and wet nurse, is able to feed the whole town from her seemingly inexhaustible breast milk. This action was
