In the remote English countryside, tapestry weaver Clarinda Asher performs a pagan fertility ritual with a local landed man—a sacred union that ignites a firestorm and ultimately has her banished to a lonely hilltop above her village.
Three hundred years later, American Jess Barlow arrives in Maidenvale as the village celebrates a diluted version of that long-ago holy day. Together with the fair’s king of the May, Jess rediscovers—and ultimately reenacts—the ancient rite, which soon rips their lives apart. But the ritual’s potency has been revived, and events take an unexpected turn.
Maiden’s Veil’s alternating stories explore the psychological power of ritual, the complexities of love, and the small actions that can cause devastation far beyond our own hearts and out into our fragile communities.
