NATIONAL BESTSELLER
A masterful debut novel following a spirited young woman’s explorations of faith, agency, and love in thirteenth-century Bruges.
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“Atmospheric and unforgettable.”—People
“In Canticle, Janet Rich Edwards brings the medieval world brilliantly to life, exploring the dreams and desires of a community of women whose fascinating stories sing from every page. The novel is a suspenseful page-turner that is also rigorously researched and utterly convincing—a true gem of historical fiction.”—Bruce Holsinger, author of Culpability
“Canticle is a daring historical novel steeped in religious ecstasy. . . . Edwards manages to produce a modern narrative that remains leashed to ancient experience and the evolving religious practices of the era—some shockingly peculiar.”—The Washington Post
“Janet Rich Edwards has written a brave, intense novel about the mystical nature of a young woman’s faith and how easily it can find itself in opposition to politics and entrenched power.”—Sarah Dunant, New York Times bestselling author of The Birth of Venus
“Compelling, lyrical, and fresh, Canticle is a conjuring—of time, place, society, struggle. A tale of immense beauty, kinship, and how vision can be gift and curse in a world where the belief of a few can stifle the truth of the many, Aleys’s story is a miraculous work of historical fiction.”—Kiran Millwood Hargrave, author of The Mercies
“An enthralling debut and a page-turning story set in medieval Belgium, filled with faith and family and passion, and one girl’s drive toward the divine.”—Tatjana Soli, New York Times bestselling author of The Lotus Eaters
“Canticle is a ferocious fever dream of a novel brimming with love, sisterhood, sacrifice, and lyric delight. As we watch young Aleys attempt to forge a sacred life, she is thrown from belonging to isolation to the pyre, raising questions that strike closest to the bone: What is a miracle? Who gets to decide? And in the end, what does the world really want from us?”—Michelle Hoover, author of The Quickening and Bottomland
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Aleys is sixteen years old and unusual: stubborn, bright, and prone to religious visions. She and her only friend, Finn, a young scholar, have been learning Latin together in secret—but just as she thinks their connection might become something more, everything unravels. When her father promises her in marriage to a merchant she doesn’t love, she runs away from home, finding shelter among the beguines, a fiercely independent community of religious women who refuse to answer to the Church.
Among these hardworking and strong-willed women, Aleys glimpses for the first time the joys of belonging: a life of song, meaning, and friendship in the markets and along the canals of Bruges. But forces both mystical and political are at work. Illegal translations of scripture, the women’s independence, and a sudden rash of miracles all draw the attention of an ambitious bishop—and bring Aleys and those around her into ever-increasing danger, a danger that will push Aleys to a new understanding of love and sacrifice.
Grounded in the little-told stories of medieval women—mystics, saints, anchoresses, and beguines—and introducing a major new talent, Canticle is a luminous work of historical fiction, vividly evoking a world on the verge of transformation.
PRODUCT DETAILS
ISBN: 9781966302056
Price: $30.00
On-sale date: 12/2/2025
© Laura Rich
Janet Rich Edwards is a professor of epidemiology at Harvard University and works in the Division of Women’s Health at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. A graduate of GrubStreet’s Novel Incubator program, she lives in Brookline, Massachusetts.