A riveting historical romance, The Dancing Tree , by international bestselling author Kiran Millwood Hargrave, is a story of fear, transformation, courage, and love in 16th-century France.
Strasbourg, 1518. During a scorching summer, a lone woman begins dancing in the town square. She dances for days, nonstop, without rest. Soon, she's not alone. More and more women join her. When the number reaches hundreds, the Twenty-One, the men who rule Strasbourg, declare a state of emergency and hire musicians to rid the crowd of this plague of madness.
Meanwhile, outside the city, Lisbet lives with her husband and mother-in-law on a farm, where she tends the bees, the family's source of income. She's pregnant again, her thirteenth, but now she hopes the baby survives, hopes she won't lose him in a hemorrhage, hopes she won't have to hang another ribbon on her shrine tree in memory of a human being who never saw the light of day.
Although Lisbet is far removed from the dancing frenzy that afflicts the women, her quiet life is disrupted by the arrival of her sister-in-law. Nethe spent seven years in exile, serving penance in a mountain monastery for a crime no one dares to reveal. It's a secret that Lisbet, however, is determined to uncover.
Thus, as the sound of a thousand dancing feet and useless religious litanies dominate the city, Lisbet finds herself entangled in a dangerous web of falsehood and forbidden passions.
The Dancing Tree is a true lesson in what it means to be a woman in the 16th century, a period of superstition and extraordinary discoveries, of dangers and fears.
"Brilliant. Immersive, sensual, captivating, and utterly compelling. Accessible and ambitious, The Dancing Tree deserves awards." – Marian Keyes
"An intriguing and haunting novel that pulses with beautiful and raw emotion. Kiran Millwood Hargrave effortlessly weaves together the stories of several women with tenderness and sympathy, creating a novel in which feminine courage and resilience shine brightly against a backdrop of brilliantly evoked claustrophobic horror." – Jennifer Saint
“Some historical novels don't just describe the past, they transport us there.” – Elodie Harper
