Reading Group Guide

IN HER OWN WORDS
A Note from Brenda Rickman Vantrease

I grew up in a series of small southern towns. My favorites were always the ones with the biggest libraries. Learning to read was the singular most liberating moment of my life. I still remember the day I brought home my third-grade reader, a book of real stories—not those skinny little See Spot Run books. This one had some heft and a yellow cover, and I read it all the way through in three days. I particularly liked a fairytale about a knight trying to win fair maiden by the impossible feat of riding his horse up a glass mountain. I can still see the illustration of that plumed and helmeted knight spurring his white steed up that shimmering blue glass mountain.

My father was a Baptist minister, and some of his congregations were farther away from the library than my bicycle or roller skates could take me. When I ran out of books, I would dig out my father's old college text, a massive tome entitled Masterworks of World Literature. Boredom drove me to the epic poetry of John Milton and The Nibelungenlied and El Cid, the English poets, a little Sophocles, even Oscar Wilde, when I would have preferred to be reading Nancy Drew or a teenage romance novel—a beneficial deprivation.

I also made up stories in my head. My first published effort was a poem submitted by my 9th grade English teacher to a student anthology. (I haven't written any poetry since—maybe because when I was called up to the stage in assembly to receive my award I stumbled on the steps. Overcoming shyness is not something one can learn in the pages of a book.) While still in high school, I received my first form rejection slip from The Ladies' Home Journal. I'm still embarrassed just thinking how awful that story was—and I still remember how much that first rejection hurt. At sixteen my writer's heart was very naïve and very tender.

Libraries have always been important to me. I graduated with a B.A. in English from Belmont University, working my way through school in the college library, met my husband Don on the steps of that same library, and late in my career in education went back to school for a library degree, finishing up my teaching career in the Metropolitan Nashville School System as a librarian. During my twenty-five year tenure, I earned a master's degree and a doctorate from Middle Tennessee State University, traveled, worked summer jobs, read books on writing—and even wrote a little fiction. But it was only after I retired from teaching in 1991 that I really had time and energy to pursue my dream, and made my writing my "work."

—Brenda Rickman Vantrease

HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE



In Their Own Tongue: The Bible and the English Language

An Original Essay from the Author

When William the Conqueror and the Normans carried the day at the Battle of Hastings in 1066, it looked as though Britain would become a French-speaking nation—at least that blend of Viking and northern French called Norman French. Indeed, for the next three hundred years, until the rule of the Plantagenets, French was the language of literature, nobility, and the courts in England. The language of the Church, the largest single employer of the middle ages, was Latin. So one might expect "English" to emerge as a French-inspired language, with a few Viking, Latin, and lower-class Saxon words thrown in for zest. But instead the reverse happened. The national language today of England, America, Australia, Canada and New Zealand—not to mention the global language of diplomacy and business—is an evolved Anglo-Saxon dialect with a smattering of French and Latinate words. How did this happen?

For one thing, the English peasant, who gained new economic power after the breakdown of the feudal system, as well as political power through sheer numbers, held out for his native tongue. There were other factors, of course, but I believe that two of the most pivotal events in determining this unlikely evolution were neither political nor economic, but literary.

The first came from a minor court official and poet in the fourteenth century named Geoffrey Chaucer, who rejected the language of the nobility to write in the East midland dialect spoken in and around London, which came to be known as the King's English. His Canterbury Tales did for the English language what Dante's Divine Comedy did for the Italian. He took a dialect spoken by relatively few people and turned it into a national language.

The second factor, and the one that holds the most fascination for me as a writer of historical fiction, is the English peasant's insistence that he be allowed to read the Bible in his own language. From the first biblically-inspired old English poems of Caedmon in 670, to the completion of The King James Bible in 1611, the struggle to put the most widely read and referenced—and most widely banned and burned—book into the language of the people persisted. Such translations were almost always met with resistance from powerful persons and institutions who were heavily invested in the status quo. And therein lies the human drama that is the historical basis for my novels.

Their holiest book in their own tongue: that was the goal. It was a goal achieved at great cost to many whose names we know and some we do not. Not since Pentecost has such a blend of language and subject come together with such force of fire and wind. Whichever edition you pick up, whether you are seeking spiritual enlightenment or just want to read a collection of really, really good stories, handle it with respect. Because of the sacrifice that made it possible, it is truly a "red-letter" edition.

Reading Group Questions

1. The Mercy Seller is a book about loyalty and the ordering of priorities. Gabriel has taken an oath to the Church and to his Dominican Order. What do you think of the choices he makes when that allegiance comes into conflict with his loyalty to Anna and their child?

2. Take a moment to discuss the freedom of speech within the context of this book—and beyond. Do you think the practice of book-burning is heretical in and of itself? Why or why not?

3. To whom does Anna owe a debt of loyalty? In what ways does she—or doesn't she—keep her promises?

4. What loyalty do Sir John and the king owe to each other, and how do they discharge their debts? Can you draw contemporary parallels where private and public loyalties come into conflict?

5. Anna and Gabriel travel great distances, both physically and spiritually, in the course of the book. What do they gain and lose on their journeys?

6. How do you regard the risks that such characters as Finn, Kathryn, and Sir John are prepared to take in service of their beliefs? What about when those risks endanger other people?

7. Would you say Father Francis is a good priest given the times in which he lived?

8. From the perspective of the previous questions: Who is traitor? Who is villain? Who is hero?

9. How is the idea that "clothes make the man" exemplified in Gabriel's apparel and behavior? Cite differences in the way he behaves and the way others react to him depending on which costume he is wearing.

10. What is the symbolism of water throughout the book?

11. What kind of future do you envision for Anna and Gabriel? How does that compare with the marriage of Sir John and Lady Joan?

12. If you have read the author's previous novel, The Illuminator, how do you feel about the resolution of the relationship between Kathryn and Finn?