Song for Eloise

SONG FOR ELOISE is written in a lightly flowing narrative delicate as a spider web. The point of view shifts between several voices, drifting from Eloise to the characters of her husband Sir Robert, Robert's mother Merle, Eloise's Uncle John, Thomas the fisherman's son turned troubadour, the juggler Babel, the hermit William, and the peasant families living near Robert's fortress as well as softly touching upon a few more. Together their individual tales interweave to create a single story. Having been married off to her father's favorite knight, a man twice her age, Eloise is overcome by melancholy. She pines away for her old life at her parents' castle and refuses to find any happiness in her new life at Baron Robert's remote fortress. Robert is well versed in the arts of war, but he is a failure when it comes to expressing his love for his young wife who thinks he is nothing but a dumb brute and cannot look past her own grief to see his "good heart." After the birth of their son, Robert tries to bring back the light he so adored into his wife's eyes by inviting a singer to the fortress. When Thomas the troubadour arrives, Eloise's inner spirit is reawakened; however, it is in a way tragic for all involved. The happiness she does at last find has the potential to destroy the lives of her lover, her husband, and herself. Although the story is named for Eloise, Robert is undoubtedly the hero of it. He is the most sympathetic of all the main characters. It is he who acts unselfishly and suffers silently. Robert raised himself up from being the illegitimate son of a baron tossed out to live unwanted among the peasants to becoming first a stable boy, then a knight, and finally a baron himself. He is good and noble although he lacks the skilled tongue and refined manners of a courtly aristocrat much to his wife's embarrassment. Eloise is quick to find all his faults, but she fails to see any of his strengths. She overlooks everything that would make her proud to have him as her husband -- the honor bestowed upon him by her father for having saved his life, the well tended fortress and the lands over which he presides, his ability as a warrior and a huntsman, his compassion for the peasantry, his devotion to a mother struck by blindness and encroaching madness, his love for her -- and sees Robert only as a disappointing match. Consumed by her sadness, she wishes to return home and, like a modern woman, be free. As a medieval tale, this story is almost completely historically accurate, and it is very believable.

Ages 12 and up will appreciate Song For Eloise, a story of a teen married off to a man twice her age and transported to a lonely castle to live. Her involvement with a childhood friend brings newfound romance and dangers in this vivid, realistic story of medieval times and passion which brings the 12th century world to life.