This immersive tale of the Middle Ages in France draws us into the life of a woman and a peddler. Lady Celeste has married well, but her baby has died and she is ill in bed at an abbey, sick with grief. When she notices a peddler with a donkey she is driven by desperation and asks him to buy a nail from her child's coffin which, as superstition has it, will sell him her sorrow. But the peddler, Jean, spots a ruby ring on her finger and asks for it as well.

THE SORROW STONE moves on with Jean as he trades his casks of exotic spices and sugars and blessed tokens. He does wonder though if the superstition could bring him ill luck, and he daren't sell the ring for fear of being accused of theft. Lady Celeste, suffering from memory loss, is also worried that her lordly husband may be furious that she has traded away his wedding ring. And she is certain that something bad is afoot, which she could escape by staying in the abbey with her faithful young maidservant, but having second thoughts about the ring means she has to leave to follow the peddler.

Riding and walking through twelfth century France with its peasantry, religious dogma and superstition has never felt so real. Embrace the festivals, cloisters and markets, the innkeeps, pilgrims and ruffians. Author Jane Ann McLachlan spent time in France researching and tells us she traveled to Cluny, Lyon, Avignon and Marseilles along the route Jean and Celeste took, talking to guides and local historians about the climate, vegetation, landscape, castles, monasteries, and cathedrals that existed there in the 12th Century.

I can't think of a better historical drama -- and indeed a romance -- to read this year. Many of the historical novels are about men, because they had more freedom of movement and more active roles. THE SORROW STONE by J.A. McLachlan brings home what it was like to be a lady or maid.