Publisher's Synopsis
Southwest France, early in the 13th Century; a young woman is taking her dying father on a long journey to undergo a strange initiation ceremony. Grazide, the daughter of a blacksmith is deeply disturbed by what her father has insisted she should do. This is the era when many inhabitants of the region are involved in heresy. It is a time of conflict. Northern French forces have been recruited by the Church into a war against the heretics, the Albigensian Crusade. As she matures into womanhood she finds her independent nature and her self-determination opposed by the misogyny of the age. Events encompass the aftermath of war, the building of model new towns -bastides-and the devastating Papal inquisition that seeks to eliminate heresy from the region once and for all.
