I’m posting this book review on an historical novel by C.W. Gortner because I think The Last Queen is a great read and highlights the difficulties women have had throughout history attempting to be taken seriously whether they are royalty or not.  Gortner will be honored this October 15th at an event for National Reading Group Month by Women’s National Book Association, San Francisco Chapter. See links below for more information.

Juana’s courage, strength, and passion amazed me as The Last Queen came of age so vividly under C.W. Gortner’s admirable pen. This historical novel is fraught with crushing battles of power and chilling intrigue throughout the courts of her parents, Isabel of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon, and of her husband, Philip of Flanders, as the Infanta of Spain attempts to take her rightful place on the thrown she inherited from her mother.

My soul was struck as I witnessed, through Gortner’s well paced story, the agony Juana endured as her faithless husband raped her night after night, as she was forced to leave her first born behind in Flanders and another child taken from her breast by her father to raise as his own, and as she ultimately succumbed to the captivity that often befell women of royalty in those times. Had she been driven mad by her treacherous husband and her scheming, duplicitous father as they vied for her position or had Juana la Loca, as she came to be known, been wrongly labeled and shut away by the two men she learned to loathe?

That question is one for which we don’t have an answer, but I felt compelled to honor her sanity and believe she would overcome the perils in her path to rule over the people of her beloved Spain.  Her fate was sealed in loneliness and sorrow with no escape. I felt her loss as well as my own.

Women’s National Book Association, San Francisco October 15th event. Our partner, Whole Foods Mill Valley, is graciously supplying specialty foods to promote “Shared Reading.”

C. W. Gornter

Two other fabulous authors will also be reading for this event: Tanya Egan Gibson, How to Buy a Love of Reading, and Kathi Kamen Goldmark, And My Shoes Keep Walking Back to You.

The Story Woman asks men and women to write a bio-vignette about a loved one to become a TellTale Soul.

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