By Her Hand

By Her Hand is set in the tenth century and tells the story of a farm girl called Freda who thinks in poetry, but she has no learning. After surviving a Viking raid, she is taken in by an abbey and there, finds a new sisterhood and develops a passion for the written word. The bishop takes a special interest in her education and to please him, she plays the part of the saintly survivor. In truth, she cannot sense God, only her own rage and yearning.

As she chafes against the bishop’s control, she comes into the orbit of the fearsome ruler Lady Æthelflæd, and sees what it is to be a woman with power in this world. Inspired, Freda writes her rage into a poem about the Bible story of Judith who beheads the enemy Holofernes. This poem has the power to forge a kingdom, but it also has the power to destroy everything Freda holds dear.

At it’s heart, the novel is the story of a girl’s struggle to ensure her destiny is written by her hand. This is about England before it was England, and about a girl finding herself and facing her fears on the page, and off. It is about wonder, anger, sisterhood, the portrayal of women and the gatekeeping of story.

By Her Hand is an imagining of the provenance of the Old English poem Judith, which is in the Nowell Codex (also known as the Beowulf Manuscript). There are many parallel motifs and themes between the two great Old English poems and By Her Hand explores these with an eye to the past and the present. Who are the monsters? Who are the heroes? Who holds the pen? Who owns our stories, our minds, our bodies?

I hope fans of Maggie O’Farrell, Geraldine Brooks, Robyn Cadwallader and Hannah Kent will also love this book.