Lady Miracle

Starred review from September 1, 1997
King (The Raven Moon) offers everything a historical romance should have--strong sense of time and place, masterful plotting, compelling love story--and more. The "more" is the extraordinary Lady Michaelmas, a licensed physician and healer with miraculous hands, in Robert the Bruce's 14th-century Scotland. Warrior laird Diarmid Campbell is heroic in body and soul, a perfect foil for Michaelmas, the woman he can't have as long as his divorced wife lives. Their initial meeting in a battle's aftermath is mythically lovely, as are descriptions of Michaelmas as she heals a wounded warrior, a woman in childbirth, a crippled child, even a baby seal. Scottish-set medievals can be just dreadful, but King's brilliant storytelling and painstaking historical research elevates this tale of love caught between the complex politics of church and state.