Ordinary Devotion

Braided medieval and modern stories of an anchoress, her handmaiden, and the adjunct professor searching for them across centuries as they each navigate ambition, confinement, and the patriarchy.

“The modern and medieval stories spiral in and out of each other, intricate and vivid as the letters of illuminated manuscripts, connected by the mysteries of paradox: confinement and freedom, loss and fulfillment.” —Elizabeth Cunningham, My Life as a Prayer and The Maeve Chronicles

 “Holt-Browning is adept at honing in on the passion for life, nature, and language that can sustain a person through the hardest times.” —Nerissa Nields, Plastic Angel and All Together Singing in the Kitchen

Twelve-year-old Elinor is enclosed with an anchoress, Lady Adela, in a cell at Wenlock Abbey, 14th century England. Centuries later, an adjunct professor of medieval studies discovers Elinor’s long-lost book of hours on a research trip to England. Holt-Browning explores women’s timeless struggle for personal agency as her unforgettable characters discover the burdens and rewards of faith and devotion. A must-read for fans of Julian of Norwich.

“Kristen Holt-Browning’s luminous debut novel invites us to ponder the liminal spaces between one world, one time and another, the vastness within what seems small, like the hazelnut in anchoress Julian of Norwich’s vision. The modern and medieval stories spiral in and out of each other, intricate and vivid as the letters of illuminated manuscripts, connected by the mysteries of paradox: confinement and freedom, loss and fulfillment. No reader will remain unmoved by Elinor’s extraordinary devotion both to Adela, with her secret compassion for women, and to the green, sensual living world beyond the cell.” —Elizabeth Cunningham, My Life as a Prayer and The Maeve Chronicles

“Holt-Browning’s writing is so vivid that during the passages that take place in the enclosed cell in which Adela and Elinor are indefinitely confined, I could feel my breath quickening as I imagined the dark, cold space, felt the palpable loneliness of a child recently separated from her family and the rural landscape she understands and loves. Holt-Browning is adept at honing in on the passion for life, for nature, for language that can sustain a person through the hardest times.” —Nerissa Nields, Plastic Angel, and All Together Singing in the Kitchen

“Holt-Browning writes with sensitive insight of the place of women in academia and deftly leaps centuries with her graceful prose. Through Liz, her contemporary scholar, and Elinor, her young helper to a medieval anchoress, she explores timeless feminist questions with patience and grace. A must read!” —Julie Chibbaro, Into the Dangerous World and Deadly

“The narration alternates fluidly between Elinor and Liz, whose shared interest in the psychological state of the anchoress keeps the short chapters all moving in the same direction. Holt-Browning is a talented storyteller, summoning the dreary world of 14th-century England in vivid sensorial detail. . . . A richly drawn story of religious and scholastic devotion.” —Kirkus Reviews

Kristen Holt-Browning is a novelist, poet, and freelance copy editor and proofreader. Her poetry chapbook, The Only Animal Awake in the House, was published by Moonstone Press in 2021. Her poetry and fiction have appeared in several literary journals, including Hayden’s Ferry Review, Hunger Mountain, and Necessary Fiction. She holds a BA from Connecticut College and an MA from University College London. Ordinary Devotion is her first novel.

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