Tidelands

10. Characters like Sir William show how the upper class of England had to handle the rise of Cromwell and his New Model Army. Men like Ned believe this adherence to the Protestant faith and new political beliefs will benefit everyone. But as we see more common citizens of the area, is there anything to be said for the old faith? Is the “old faith” Catholicism or something even older?

11. The oldest superstitions on the island help lead to Alinor’s trial. The causes of these trials are hard for modern readers to imagine. But given that they were described as an “epidemic” in mid-sixteenth- through mid-seventeenth-century Europe, does this novel help twenty-first-century readers understand why?

12. The novel ends with King Charles executed and parliament in power. But the political tides are still turning in England. How do you imagine women like Alinor and Alys will fare in this world where so much is changing?

Enhance Your Book Club

1. Alinor is a very compelling main character. She is driven by her desire to secure a better future for her children. Ask your book club to discuss if there are any figures in history like Alinor or any contemporary heroines, in real life or fiction.

2. Have your book club discuss what factors in our current times might have motivated Philippa Gregory to write the story of a woman whose life was severely constrained by her social and financial status.

3. Has anyone in your group read other Philippa Gregory novels? Some of her most famous books are about royalty or those in the royal circle. How does Alinor compare to other Gregory heroines, like Elizabeth of York in The White Princess or Mary Boleyn in The Other Boleyn Girl?

4. When Alinor and Alys visit the market in Chichester, the lace maker says, “ ‘It’s a crime to be poor in this country; it’s a sin to be old. It’s never good to be a woman.’ ” How would your group describe conditions for those three categories (poor, old, female) now?

A Conversation with Philippa Gregory

You are best known for your series about royal families. But Cromwellian England is a time when the monarchy is out of power. What drew you to start your newest series during this time period?

It’s true that I have set many previous books in the royal courts, but what interested me about them was not the royalty but the concentration of power and therefore jeopardy—which is the heart of any dramatic story. Also, in the royal courts we have records of women that are completely absent further down the social scale, and it was the stories of historical women that I wanted to tell. Further ahead in time there are more records of what ordinary women and men were doing, which I could draw on to root the fiction in a historical reality. By making Alinor a wholly fictional character, I was able to write a historical novel which was true to the time. I don’t know that there is any record of the life of an ordinary working woman in this period. The diarists and letter writers simply were not interested in them, so any account is going to have to be mostly fictional.

I wanted to leave the world of the royals—I have tried to write about them without “rose-tinted” vision; but inevitably these are elite people and their difficulties and dangers, though sometimes extreme, are not the difficulties and dangers of people on the edge of poverty. This first book is where my family starts, in poverty. They’re going to rise in the world, but they come (as most English families do, however grand they are now) from agricultural laborers on the edge of survival. It’s a very leveling thought!

You have a great ability to flesh out characters only briefly mentioned in the historical record. But at the time Alinor lived, there would be almost no original source material for a poor woman with no social status. Were you still able to use the same research process to build her character?