Eleanore of Avignon by Elizabeth DeLozier
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, large print, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: historical fiction
Pages: 320
Published by Dutton Books on November 5, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Eleanore of Avignon is the story of a woman who is unwilling to bend to the limitations her society places upon her when she becomes the unlikely apprentice to the pope’s physician at the most challenging and dangerous moment in medieval European history.
Provence, 1347. Eleanore (Elea) Blanchet is a midwife and budding herbalist with remarkable skills. But as she knows all too well from her late mother’s fate, she must be careful to stay within her station. So, she quietly accepts her role tending to the pregnant women in her home city of Avignon; spending time with her father and beloved twin sister, Margot; and escaping to the surrounding woods to forage for herbs when she can. At the very least, she is determined to preserve the little freedom she does have by staying unwed—unlike Margot, who is about to marry a man with painful connections to their mother’s death.
Then, in a chance encounter, Elea meets Guy de Chauliac, “Guigo,” the enigmatic personal physician to the powerful Pope Clement, who, against all odds, agrees to take her on as his apprentice. Under his tutelage, a whole new world opens to Elea—a world of status, wealth, and fascinating medical cases—but just as she starts to settle into her new position, the much-feared plague hits Europe, making Elea and Guigo's work more urgent than ever. And as if that weren’t enough, the disgraced Queen Joanna of Naples arrives in Avignon to stand trial for her husband’s murder—and she is pregnant and in need of a midwife, a role only Elea can fill.
As the Black Death spreads like wildfire, leaving half the city dead in its wake—and as the queen's childbirth approaches—Elea finds herself battling what seems to be an unwinnable war. All the while, the people of Avignon are becoming more and more desperate for a scapegoat, and a group of religious heretics launch a witch hunt, one that could cost her everything.

My Review:

Eleanore Blanchet was named in honor of Eleanor of Aquitaine, and she certainly did her best to live up to the legacy of her famous namesake. Not that their lives had nearly the same scope – even though Elea Blanchet found herself closer to the halls of power than she ever expected to be.

The story takes place in 1347, in Provence, in the city of Avignon. At that time, Avignon was the seat of the Pope because Rome was in ruins and under constant threat from warring Italian principalities. Avignon was more civilized. Also considerably safer.

Except for one, seemingly distant problem. The Black Death. The plague that wiped out as much as 50% of Europe’s 14th century population had already begun when this story opens. It just hadn’t reached Avignon – YET.

So we begin Eleanore’s story in the calm before the inevitable storm – not that Eleanore’s life has been all that calm to begin with.

Elea is an apothecary, a midwife, and a healer – just as her mother taught her. But she is also an educated, unmarried woman at a time and place where women like herself were always under threat of accusations of witchcraft – and burned at the stake for it. Whether those accusations were true or not. And mostly and most certainly, they were not.

Her mother was killed by a madwoman who claimed Bietriz Blanchet was a witch, so she died before she could be burnt. But her death, and the accusations and insinuations that followed, have pursued Elea ever since.

But Elea burns to be a healer, to help and to save as many as she can with whatever skills she has. A fire in her belly that brings her to the attention of Guy de Chauliac, the personal physician to the Pope himself, and one of the 14th century’s greatest and most scientific (real) physicians. Guigo, as he’s called, is treating Pope Clement for a painful but seemingly not fatal illness. He’s tried everything he knows and so has every other doctor he’s called in. He overhears Elea discussing herbal remedies and hopes that she has an answer he hasn’t tried.

She does. Once she is permitted to examine Clement in person, she realizes that the illness is one she’s seen and treated before. He has kidney stones. And that’s something that can be treated with the right herbal remedy – which she has.

It’s a deal that should have benefitted them both. Elea becomes Guigo’s apprentice, which protects her from the allegations of witchcraft. At least as long as he’s around and things are calm. In return, Guigo gets an assistant who will not balk at the stranger things he studies, can record his treatments and his speculations accurately, and can serve as an educated, intelligent, sounding board.

They are colleagues. They are friends. (And thank goodness there’s never even a hint of romance between them.)

The plague changes everything. As the city literally dies around them, they desperately seek a treatment that will save even a few. But their scientific explorations run counter to the mob’s desire for a scapegoat, for vengeance against someone, anyone, to blame for the conflagration that seems to be swallowing the world down into hell.

When the Pope flees his own city, that mob, their descent in madness driven by despair and demagogues, hunts for targets on which to take out their fear and anger.

As was common, then and now, they attack the Jewish Quarter of the city, driving the survivors to flee the city. The Jews did not cause the plague, they are not immune to the plague, but as has happened in history before and since, the Jewish religious laws, many of which focus on cleanliness, have meant that the Jewish population has not been hit quite as hard as the Christians that surround them on all sides.

But the priest leading the rampaging mobs has a particular, vitriolic, truly mad enmity for Elea, a hatred that he first visited on her mother and has now passed to her. He wants to see Elea burn, possibly even more so because her mother died before he could put her on the pyre. There are plenty in his flocking mob who want to drown their fear in anyone’s fire who will help him bring her “to heel” or to ashes.

Unless the magic of love and friendship can deliver her from his evil before its too late for her, even though it is already too late for everyone else.

Escape Rating A: I was surprised at how much I got into this, and how absorbed I was by it. Considering how much of this story is about the terrible progress of and the extreme losses caused by the first surge of the Black Death in the 14th century, enjoy isn’t quite the word I was to use here. But captivated certainly is.

Part of that was that I found Eleanore’s journey to be surprisingly easy to empathize with. While specifically she wants to be a healer, more generally, she wants to be something other than a wife and a mother. (Also, she’s afraid of dying in childbirth, as she’s seen much too much of that AND it was a contributing factor in her mother’s death in some really twisted ways.)

And that, the idea of being herself first and filling her OWN vocation instead of the one that society expects of her, is a situation that 21st century readers can identify with.

Also, Eleanore reminded me, a lot and really surprisingly, of Anja, the protagonist of Hemlock & Silver. Because Eleanore and Anja are in very similar uncomfortable positions when their stories begin. Both are healers, both would rather work than pursue marriage and family, both are on paths that are unexpected for women that leave them open to accusations of witchcraft, and both find themselves treating people of classes so far above their own that if they succeed they’re stuck and if they fail they’re dead whether it’s their fault or not.

Eleanore’s story also reminded me a bit of the time travel classic by Connie Willis, Doomsday Book, which is also centered on a female healer, always in danger of being accused of witchcraft – as long as there is someone left alive to accuse her – who treats the plague afflicted in a small town and is forced to watch as everyone around her dies.

And, of course, Eleanore’s situation – minus the witchcraft persecution – also mirrors the death toll and terrible circumstances of the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1916 and the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020, when this book was written.

Still, this is Eleanore’s story, not any of the others, and she’s the one who carries the burden both in the story and for it. Because the story is told from her perspective, we see what she sees and experiences what she does, her hopes, her fears, her strengths AND her frailties and failings.

She knows that every step she takes is potentially her last. Both that she could succumb to the disease once it arrives, but mostly because she knows that her pursuit of a calling over a family is dangerous for her. If she marries it would protect her, but it could also strip away her agency and that’s a risk she won’t take.

The contrast between Elea and her twin, Margot shows those respective paths clearly – and how they can both go wrong – particularly in a crisis.

My one – and only – quibble with the story is the romance. Not the romance itself, although when it first seemed like Eleanore had caught feelings for someone – that relationship would have been a disaster. I like the character she did fall for, and I particularly liked that their very slow burn relationship brought in the perspective of the embattled Jewish community, how restrictive the laws were about Jewish interactions with the Gentile community, and then the introduction of the “blood libel”, an accusation that pervades antisemitism even to the present day and fuels the scapegoating of the Jewish community in the story.

I am caught on the dilemma that, while I’m glad that the introduction of the romance created the possibility of escape and even a somewhat happy ending for Eleanore, I’m less certain that it had to exist at all. Just because a story has a female protagonist does not mean that a romance is required. If this had been Guigo’s story instead of Eleanore’s there would not have been a romance – because he’s way too obsessed with his work. But so was she.

That quibble is what’s keeping this as a Grade A escape instead of an A+. But I recognize that this is very much of a ‘me’ thing and overall Eleanore of Avignon is an excellent work of historical fiction and I highly recommend it.