Fiorella de Maria

Poor Banished Children. Fiorella de Maria. 2011. The second of the 3 books Marinella and Doug lent me is a historical novel about the Barbary pirates and a young woman’s determination to survive with her honor. In seventeenth century England a mysterious young woman is washed ashore. She knows no English and we learn her story in flashbacks as she makes her confession to a priest. After her family deserted her, a priest took her in and educated her in the classics as well as medicine. She was captured by Barbary Pirates, sold to a Moslem man and eventually made her escape with the help of another priest and a pirate. Her story is full of cruelty and kindness as she struggles to gain her freedom. This was an interesting story as I’d never thought much about the horror a woman would be subjected to if she were kidnapped and sold into slavery. Cruelty and violence… (mere)