From the Golden Age of the first Queen Elizabeth comes one of the world's great love stories—the story of the woman who was the beloved wife of the famous adventurer, Sir Walter Raleigh.
Bess Throckmorton was a Maid of Honor to Queen Elizabeth when the dashing Captain of the Queen's Guard fell in love with her. It was a bold, reckless passion, for the jealous Queen not only forbade her Maids to marry but she regarded Raleigh as her favorite courtier. When Bess and Walter defied her to marry secretly, they were condemned to spend their honeymoon imprisoned in the Tower of London!
As Bess knew, Raleigh had shaped his life to the dream of achieving greatness for himself and his country in the New World. But much as she loved him, Bess could never share that driving ambition. And now that their love for each other had come between her husband and his goal, she saw that his dream was a rival to be feared—an invisible enchantress who could lure him from her side or even crowd her out of his heart entirely.
Yet Bess did not hold him back. Instead she went with him to make her peace with the Queen, to take her place at court again as a Lady in Waiting. How she found within herself the courage to follow her husband through a maze of intrigue, the pride to join him in a prison cell, the faith to give him their son as a hostage to the future, is a superb story of a woman's radiant spirit and selfless devotion.
Here, through the eyes of the woman who knew him best, Walter Raleigh lives again, a man with the faults and virtues of his age—and a genius that left its mark on our own land. As for Bess herself, you'll find a heroine worthy of her own place in history—and a woman you can take to your heart. This beautifully written story of their tempestuous, rewarding life together is historical fiction of a high order. Like such outstanding novels as Irving Stone's Immortal Wife and Love Is Eternal and Harnett Kane's The Lady of Arlington, it deserves a place among the books of lasting value in every home library.
—from the dust jacket
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