This novel is a weaving of lives and events around a ancient Hebrew book: the Sarajevo Haggadah. The novel moves between the present, where Dr Hanna Heath is researching and restoring the Sarajevo Haggadah, and events and people specific to the creation and journey of the manuscript in the past. Along the way, the reader learns something of the creation of such manuscripts and of their restoration.

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of 'March' and 'People of the Book'. A young woman's struggle to save her family and her soul during the extraordinary year of 1666, when plague suddenly struck a small Derbyshire village. In 1666, plague swept through London, driving the King and his court to Oxford, and Samuel Pepys to Greenwich, in an attempt to escape contagion. The north of England remained untouched until, in a small community of leadminers and hill farmers, a bolt of cloth arrived from the capital. The tailor who cut the cloth had no way of knowing that the damp fabric carried with it bubonic infection. So begins the Year of Wonders, in which a Pennine village of 350 souls confronts a scourge beyond remedy or understanding. Desperate, the villagers turn to sorcery, herb lore, and murderous witch-hunting. Then, led by a young and charismatic preacher, they elect to isolate themselves in a fatal quarantine. The story is told through the eyes of Anna Frith who, at only 18, must contend with the death of her family, the disintegration of her society, and the lure of a dangerous and illicit attraction.Geraldine Brooks's novel explores love and learning, fear and fanaticism, and the struggle of 17th century science and religion to deal with a seemingly diabolical pestilence. 'Year of Wonders' is also an eloquent memorial to the real-life Derbyshire villagers who chose to suffer alone during England's last great plague.

A young woman's struggle to save her family and her soul during the mostextraordinary year of 1666, when plague suddenly visited a small Derbyshirevillage and the villagers, inspired by a charismatic preacher, electedto quarantine themselves to limit the contagion.