Philippa Gregory's Tidelands represents a major new trajectory for an author who was propelled into literary superstardom in 2001 with the publication of The Other Boleyn Girl, the first in a 15-book series that centers on real historical women from the Plantagenet and Tudor lines. The new novel blossomed from an epiphany of sorts while Gregory was rereading John Galsworthy's Forsyte Saga. In a brief scene from the classic family epic, Soames Forsyte travels to a rural area of England in search of his family's homestead, only to find himself completely alienated from his ancestral roots and literally stuck in the mud.

"I looked at the history of other families I know, and I looked at my own family, and I thought, most of us start in a muddy field somewhere," Gregory says, "and so I thought, that's where I want to start this story."

Speaking by phone from London, the author reassures readers who may be apprehensive about her abandoning her royal roots: "I've already started writing book two of the series, and I have to say, I think it's completely thrilling."

Gregory published her first novel, Wideacre, in 1987, while she was completing a Ph.D. in 18th-century literature. Since then she's written about the British slave trade, English colonists in Jamestown, Virginia, nearly every era of medieval English history and beyond. But a common thread runs rather ostentatiously throughout her extensive and eclectic bibliography. 

"I like stories about women," Gregory says. "A lot of my books—The White Queen, The White Princess, The Lady of the Rivers—they are about the power that women have over each other's lives as daughters and mothers and grandmothers." 

One of the things that attracted Gregory to her Plantagenet and Tudor characters was the faintness of their official historical footprint. Though these heroines were well-born, Gregory says, "they don't all have very well-recorded histories. We still don't know, for instance, Anne Boleyn's date of birth. I mean, it's just extraordinary that we don't. We don't know how old Catherine Howard was, and that makes a huge difference to how you regard her. You know, [if] she's a girl of 14 or a girl of 17, you read her behavior very, very differently."

For Tidelands, however, which opens in 1648 during the English Civil War, there were indeed historical subplots (such as the attempted rescue of King Charles I from prison in the months leading up to his trial) that demanded what Gregory describes as "very tight, meticulous research," but for the most part it is a study of the period's social history. The story centers on the intelligent and dignified Alinor Reekie, an herbalist, midwife and lay healer. Abandoned by her feckless and abusive husband, Alinor lives alone with her children in the tidelands, a marshy estuarial region along England's southern coast. 

Although Alinor is fictional, she represents a type of woman that would have been found in most rural communities of the era. Through the recorded social history, Gregory knows what would have gone on inside Alinor's birthing chamber and what sort of medicine she might have used.

"It's sort of funny that you would think when you're writing an imaginary character, you'd be much freer of the research," Gregory says, "but I'm not, because I never imagine the stuff that has been recorded. . . . So when I decided I wanted to write a book about a fictional woman, it was absolutely natural to go to someone whose life we can know about because we have some social history about the time. We know what she would be eating and what she would be paid for different tasks. I could create somebody, in one sense, that could stand for women in that time." 

Of course, women in Alinor's day were, as in most every other period of history, vulnerable to the whims and insecurities of the men who were formally in charge. As Gregory observes, "One of the things that happens when people don't record women's history is that they miss that almost hidden power structure." In Alinor's case, due to her livelihood as an herbalist and midwife, as well as the reputation of her mother and the insinuations of her absent husband, she lives in fear of being labeled a witch. 

Witchcraft as a catchall bogeyman is an age-old tool of social control, which has echoed into the future in other guises, such as the vilification of feminism. "[When I began] speaking out as a woman, if you said you were a feminist, certain people immediately assumed things about you," Gregory says, "basically, that you were a man-hater, that you were emasculating, which was very like fears around witchcraft. Both of those things can be taken very badly by audiences who are frightened of what they might mean and give in to fear before inquiry."

Tidelands is the first entry in what Gregory hopes will be a sweeping series of six to eight volumes that follow Alinor's descendants up to nearly the 20th century, leading them, generation by generation, from poverty to prosperity. 

"I'll have my people, as it were, scattered around the world in the most exciting places," Gregory says with an audible twinkle. "That's the joy of purely fictional writing. Before, I couldn't really say, well, I'll see where the story takes me, because I know what the story is. This is a whole new career in a way, and it feels very much freer."

On Midsummer's Eve in 1648, as the sword clash between king and parliament mounts, Alinor waits in a graveyard in England's south-coast Tidelands for a ghost who will free her from her brutal husband. Instead, she meets a young man on the run and guides him safely across the soul-hungry marshes, with consequences. With a 250,000-copy first printing.

Gregory, author of a number of highly acclaimed historicals, such as her series on the Plantagenets and Tudors (The Last Tudor), begins a new series with a gripping novel set during just a few months of the English Civil War. With her usual meticulous attention to detail, the author easily elicits the chaos and dangers of the mid-17th century. Unlike her other historical novels, this one focuses on a small, overlooked village at the very edge of England. It explores the unexpected ways in which chance encounters can alter the course of one's life. This series, as with John Galsworthy's "Forsyte Saga," follows the fortunes of one family. Alinor, a midwife and herbalist, deserted by her husband, lives mainly for her children. One night, she takes in a stranger who is loyal to the exiled King Charles I, changing her life and the lives of her children irrevocably. VERDICT This book will leave readers eagerly awaiting the next installment in the series. Fans of Gregory's works and of historicals in general will delight in this page-turning tale. [See Prepub Alert, 2/11/19.]—Pamela O'Sullivan, Coll. at Brockport Lib., SUNY

Gregory (The Splendor Before the Dark) deviates from her usual focus on historical figures to shine a light on the plight of common women in 1640s England in the dynamic first book of her new Fairmile series. Alinor, a midwife with knowledge of herbal remedies, is in difficult circumstances. Her fisherman husband has been gone for months, and she must care for herself and her two growing children during a precarious time in England's history. King Charles, forced off his throne by Parliament, has been banished to the Isle of Wight following his defeat in civil war. It's also a period when a strong woman on her own, like the beautiful Alinor who has skills that others can't understand, can easily be accused of being a witch; the author cleverly plants such seeds of suspicion throughout. At the open, Alinor meets a handsome, young Catholic priest, a royals champion with the means to help the king escape. She helps the priest find a haven, and their ensuing romance has devastating consequences for both. Against the backdrop of political turmoil, Gregory's narrative displays the harrowing mores of the time, showcasing the vulnerability of women who speak their mind and introducing a family struggling out of poverty who will provide plenty of grist for the mill of a continuing saga. History buffs and Gregory's fans alike will be anticipating the next installment. (Aug.)