Bingo: Refuge. The main character Anna serves as a refuge to others in times of hardship.
My dad likes to poke fun at my tendency to read about heavy topics. When I told him I was reading a book about the plague, he thought it was par for the course. But as horrifying as the Black Plague was, Year of Wonders manages to be a beautiful tale of resilience, care, and healing. Which is not to say it’s a light book, but it is a hopeful one.
The story takes place in the seventeenth century. Our heroine Anna is a widow with two young children. She works as a servant for the local rector and his beautiful and saintly wife Elinor.
The plague infiltrates the small village through one visitor who is sick and quickly dies. The villagers start dying in droves, including Anna’s two children. Despite her grief, she continues to care for the rector and his wife and visits those in the community who are sick.
There is an older woman considered a witch who lives with her free spirited niece. The two of them in fact are healers, cultivating a garden of herbs and plants to use for remedies. In a hysteria of fear, the townspeople turn on the two and end up hanging the niece as a witch. Afterwards, Anna and Elinor take over caring for the garden and learn to use the plants to alleviate suffering.
The rector has the village shut down to prevent the spread of the plague. He tries to help the community by giving sermons about trusting god’s will and not interpreting the plague as god’s wrath and punishment. Privately, Anna does not think the plague has anything to do with god, but is a part of nature. Anna reveres nature but also can see its terrible power.
Anna becomes a midwife in place of the old woman and her murdered niece. She is afraid, but does the work anyway. In the midst of all this death is also the assertion of life.
Anna is good and gentle without being perfect. She idolizes the rector and his wife, especially Elinor. Elinor is drawn as everything beautiful and wise, without somehow being saccharine. As the story progresses, Elinor becomes a lightening rod for the rector’s reckoning, where his cold wrath is revealed for the weakness it is.
Year of Wonders is a book about living through catastrophe and still remaining human amidst the horror. I found Anna a true heroine, growing into herself among great hardship. This is a heavy book in that it is about a heavy subject. But there is light and growth as well. The dark and the light are well balanced and there is hope as well as despair.
