Women of Ashdon
by Valerie Anand

This historical novel follows two women of the Whitmead family and their relationship with their manor house Ashdon and the political intrigues of their times. The first half of the novel takes place during the War of the Roses and concerns Susannah Whitmead. As a young woman, she falls in love with the young knight Giles Saville, but is instead married off to James Weston instead. He is kind and good and he and Susannah have a good relationship. But it is his house Ashdon Susannah truly comes to love. She manages to hold on to the house through two more marriages and her second husband's involvement in a treasunous plot. The second half of the book follows Christina, Susannah's grand-daughter during the Elizabethan era. Like her grandmother, Christina also makes a marriage of convenience in order to keep Ashdon. However, her marriage is tumultuous, mainly due to her overwhelming passion for the house. She keeps it, but at great cost.
I quite enjoyed this book, especially for the way it focused on the lives of more ordinary people living at some distance from the powerful and from major political events. Anand did a good job of showing how those historical events affected or involved regular people. I also liked the characters a great deal. Susannah was my favorite. She was a very strong, loving woman who earnestly worked for a good life for herself and her family. I felt a ;lot of sympathy for Christina, but found her frustrating. She just could never really understand the people around her or even herself and was also a bit impulsive. The two women are an interesting pair - they both had an attachment to Ashdon, but only one of them properly understood the assignment.