Revelations

Written by Mary Sharratt

Narrated by Polly Lee

A fifteenth-century Eat, Pray, Love, Revelations illuminates the intersecting lives of two female mystics who changed history—Margery Kempe and Julian of Norwich.

Bishop’s Lynn, England, 1413. At the age of forty, Margery Kempe has nearly died giving birth to her fourteenth child. Fearing that another pregnancy might kill her, she makes a vow of celibacy, but she can’t trust her husband to keep his end of the bargain. Desperate for counsel, she visits the famous anchoress Dame Julian of Norwich.

Pouring out her heart, Margery confesses that she has been haunted by visceral religious visions. Julian then offers up a confession of her own: she has written a secret, radical book about her own visions, Revelations of Divine Love. Nearing the end of her life and fearing Church authorities, Julian entrusts her precious book to Margery, who sets off the adventure of a lifetime to secretly spread Julian's words.

Mary Sharratt vividly brings the medieval past to life as Margery blazes her trail across Europe and the Near East, finding her unique spiritual path and vocation. It's not in a cloistered cell like Julian, but in the full bustle of worldly existence with all its wonders and perils.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperAudio
• Release date: Apr 27, 2021
• ISBN: 9780358450436

Mary Sharratt

MARY SHARRATT, the author of seven critically acclaimed novels, is on a mission to write strong women back into history. Her novels include Daughters of the Witching Hill, the Nautilus Award–winning Illuminations: A Novel of Hildegard von Bingen,The Dark Lady’s Mask: A Novel of Shakespeare’s Muse, and Ecstasy, about the life, loves, and music of Alma Mahler. She is an American who lives in Lancashire, England.  

Reviews for Revelations

[wagner5sarah35 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I remember reading about Margery Kempe and Julian of Norwick in my college classes on medieval Europe and I can't quite believe it's taken this long for me to encounter a novel centered around these two remarkable women. Margery Kempe was a rare woman in her time - she left her husband and children to go on religious pilgrimage and live a life guided by visions of Christ. Many in her hometown considered her to be an obnoxious whore; many that she encountered on pilgrimage thought her to be a living saint (Is it really surprising why she vastly preferred pilgrimage to being home?). I read a lot of historical fiction and what I liked about this one was the centering of people's religious beliefs during the later Middle Ages (which would have been a huge part of daily life), rather than the political schemes of the rich and powerful (although I like those novels, too!).