Alys Clare lives in the English countryside where her novels are set, circa 1093. The series known as the Aelf Fen mysteries consists of six books. Featured is the healer Lassair, a young woman. The series explores an England where pagan ways are giving way to Christianity. Lassair is dynamic, having gone to a Christian school, but trained in the ways of her mystic healer family. There is always a mystery, but really, the novels explore living in a very different time from our modern mind set.
At the start of Clare's sixth Aelf Fen novel, apprentice healer Lassair helps rescue a foreign woman and her infant son from a mob in Cambridge in the fall of 1093. When Lassair and the sheriff's man later go looking for the woman's missing family members, receding flood waters reveal a body that raises suspicions of murder. ML
