Book cover of The Queen's Vow: A Novel of Isabella of Castile

Book description

“A masterwork by a skilled craftsman . . . Make a vow to read this book.”—New York Journal of Books
 
Isabella is barely a teenager when she becomes an unwitting pawn in a plot to dethrone her half brother, King Enrique. Suspected of treason and held captive, she treads…

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Why read it?

1 author picked The Queen's Vow as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Isabella of Castile is one of Spain’s most controversial and complicated queens. I have been teaching Spanish history for decades, so it was particularly thrilling for me to see how C.W. Gortner brings this dynamic woman to life. Having engineered her own marriage to Fernando of Aragon, Isabella contrived to back the voyages of Christopher Columbus and took an active part in the war against the Moors in Granada. She resists and finally succumbs to the demands of the fanatical inquisitor Torquemada, who urges her to rid the realm of Jews. Gortner recreates the climate of intrigue, the bloody battlefields,…

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One woman, Mary Katharine Goddard, signed the Declaration of Independence and risked hanging by doing so.

She was supposed to marry and have children, living the ‘normal’ life of an 18th-century woman. Destiny said otherwise. Instead, at the behest of her impulsive brother, she moved from one colony to another,…

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