In the Margins By Gail Holmes

We are the spaces between the words.

Inspired by a real person, In the Margins is the story of spirited book-collector Frances Wolfreston—the woman who uniquely preserved the earliest part of Shakespeare’s legacy.

England, 1647. As civil war gives way to an uneasy peace and Puritanism becomes the letter of the law, Frances Wolfreston, a rector’s wife, is charged with enforcing religious compliance by informing on her parishioners. This awful task triggers memories of her mother, Alice, who inspired Frances’ love of books and secretly practised Catholicism at great risk. Conflicted, she doesn’t report a reclusive and mysterious midwife to delay her going to gaol.

As Frances takes increasingly bold steps to help the women and children of the parish, she attracts the ire of a patron of the church who questions why Frances collects books that she charges are entertainment. When her mother is gaoled for religious crimes, the secrets Frances hides from her husband begin to surface, and she is faced with an impossible comply with the strict dictates of the new laws, or risk everything to free the women she cares for.

In this tender and powerful work of imagination, the life of a remarkable woman who wrote and lived in the margins in a time where women’s voices went unheard is restored to history. Beautifully written and deeply moving, In the Margins is a testament to the way literature can illuminate our inner lives and set us free when the world around us is covered in darkness.