the book is a fictionalize account, paying attention to some details, and changing others.. for instance the pastor who suggest the quarrenteen, in truth, had two daughters, that he sent away before it started, in the fictionalized story, he and his wife are childless.

likewise, the pastors wife dies of plague, but in the fiction, she gets it, surrives, and its later killed in an accident.

the bit about the man who was burried alive is a true, but there is no record of who the gravedigger was, or what was done to him, in the fiction, the gravedigger is the miner who has his hand impalled with a knife an a stowe.

since all the 'thoughts and emotions' are made up anyway, (most of the town was illiterate, and there are very few written records of the goings ons.) the author made the whole thing a work of fiction. Still its very good.

at times, the characters seem to modern, but then again, they did live in times were even in small village, they would know what was happening in the greater part of brittin, (Cromwell would have been hard to miss!) so for many, things were changing, and as the auther has said, in time of change, great characters can emerge.

the narrator is the rectors part time housemaid (who according to the pastors records, survived) who is a new widow, (Sam, was her husband and killed in his mine) who is forced to do new things just to survive (like go out to work as a housemaid, and take in borders) the book is as much a record of her journey from frightened young girl, to capably woman as it is the story of the town.


my other obsession