Women’s novels

Hawkswold Priory

As the King battles for English religious control, young tomboy Julian Upton announces her desire to become a priest. Julian befriends monk Hugh Warrenham who’s destined to be ordained in her family’s priory at Hawkswold. But their relationship gives the Crown reason to scrutinize the priory as Cromwell systematically dismantles the Pope’s influence.

When her father dies, Julian is sent to an abbey, but it’s destroyed before she can take her vows. Without resources, her survival depends on her ability to use the skills she taught herself as a child. When Cromwell’s troops seize Hawkswold, Father Hugh plans to follow his vocation, but first he must find out if Julian is safe.

“Once a novice in an abbey and a housekeeper in a brothel, I loved a man who didn’t see me as a woman and a priest who chose his vows over me.”

Lety’s Gift

Born with a gift, Sophie Hawkins is about to be consecrated the first woman Anglican bishop in Newfoundland’s Eastern Diocese and stops to relate her story to university students. She was born illegitimate in a poor fishing village in the 50s. After her mother’s death, the young child was left to be raised by a cruel grandmother, a sexually-abusive minister, and the sadistic overseers of a prison-like orphanage, leading her to a breakdown.

Psychiatrist and Anglican priest, Griffon Fairbourne helps Sophie to accept her gift, and as a chaplain, use it to help others.

Passup Point

Jonah Devlin arrives at an isolated fishing village in Labrador to serve as pastor of a community church the Anglicans had abandoned years earlier. Gabrielle Pye, a young waitress, struggles to raise her two brothers in the depressed economy of maritime Canada. When the Trans Labrador Highway opens the tiny town to the outside world, Gabrielle’s crime of forgery, committed when she was just thirteen, makes her a target of the Canadian police and inevitable imprisonment.

Just as Devlin attempts to help her, reports of his troubled past reach Passup. At a former parish, Devlin had been accused of unspeakable acts against his parishioners. Will the quirky citizens of Passup and surrounding villages fire him too, or will they reveal their own convictions anchored in love and community?