Resumo de Year Of Wonders - Geraldine Brooks

This is a story based on facts about an English town ravaged by a plague in 1665. It was triumph of spirit the good and the bad. The rector tried hard to keep the people together and keep their trust in God when most family members died of the plague. Nearly two quarters of the village people died. Ann Frith, the main character in the story became widowed after her miner husband was caved in his mine leaving her with two babies. She was only eighteen then and had to work as a maid with the rector and his wife and help at the Bradford household when they have parties. The rector quarantined the village from the outside world and their basic necessities was shouldered by an Earl in a nearby village. They put a boundary stone where a delivery man would leave the provisions there and it was retrieved when he was far away. Most of them stayed except the Bradford family who dismissed all their servants and left. After the sexton died and the rector can no longer help them bury their dead, it was Anna?s father who profited from digging the graves and became too greedy and tried to bury a man alive and stole some of his possessions. They nailed him in the mines and left to die. Anna?s step-mother tried to make money by selling incantations to the desperate. When she was discovered, she became crazy and killed her daughter. Then at last they found a way to stop the infection by burning most of their possessions and scrubbing their houses clean with boiling water. The plague stopped. After a year the rector opened the boundaries and declared to outsiders that the plague was gone and they can integrate again. On the thanksgiving prayer Elinor, the rector?s wife was killed by Aphra, Anna?s stepmother. The rector was not able to do his duties for a while and Anna continued to take care of him. He became a recluse and did not receive most visitors. Soon Anna and him became sexually aware of each other. Anna found out that he never had sex with Elinor. Bradford?s daughter asked help when her mother was giving birth to her love child and Anna delivered it. They wanted the baby dead but Anna promised to raise it herself and she got a purse of gold coins and some jewellery to raise the baby. The Bradford men wanted the baby dead and Anna had to flee. The rector gave his horse so she can go straight away. She told her to go to Elinor?s household as he arranged for her to stay there but she changed her mind and decided to board a ship that carried them away somewhere. She hired a maid to care for the baby and she found lodging until the innkeeper told her a man was looking for her and the baby. She paid off the maid and decided to board another ship the next morning. She was able to escape to an Arab country. She traced the author a book who was an Arab doctor so she can learn midwifery from him. Luckily, the captain of the ship knew him. The only way she could live with him was to register her as one of his wives. She helped him with the delivery of babies of the Arab women. She gave birth to the rector?s baby with the help of the Arab doctor. So she thrived in this Arab household with the Bradford baby, Aisha and Elinor, the fruit of he tryst with the rector.

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