TRY BEFORE YOU TRUST

Briones’ mid-16th-century romance novel is inspired by the life of Isabella Whitney, the first female English secular poet to have her work published.

Isabella (Izzy) Whitney, the daughter of a landowner with a small estate, turns 18 in 1567. She has accepted the position of maidservant to the widowed Lady Bramwell and will spend the next year in London, where she will be trained in the skills necessary to run a proper home should she marry and have children. It is not the prospect of perfecting the womanly tasks of the day that excites Izzy (she far prefers to write poetry) but rather the opportunity to avail herself of Baron Bramwell’s extensive library. (Her cousin William has been tutoring her in writing and the reading of “ancient tales of history, adventure, and romance,” subjects not deemed appropriate for proper young maidens.) Unfortunately, when she arrives at Bramwell House, she learns that the Baron’s library is locked to all but Lady Bramwell and her handsome, 21-year-old nephew Robert Barrington. Izzy finally meets the elusive Robert, a law student at Cambridge, when he is ensconced in the Baron’s library during Lady Bramwell’s lavish Twelfth Night celebration. He is charmed by Izzy’s interest in literature and poetry; he too is a poet, he tells her. Thus begins a passionate (verging on melodramatic) tale of love, ambition, secret betrothal, and a betrayal that compromises Izzy’s reputation. Briones has faithfully replicated the fashions, mores, customs, effusive linguistics, and social stratifications of the early Elizabethan era. Although little is known about the life of the historical Isabella Whitney, Briones’ fictional Izzy, an eloquent narrator of her own story, is a vibrant and independent protagonist who refuses to be felled by her lover’s betrayal—despite the hardships she undergoes, she becomes a dynamic literary advocate for women. Briones packs the novel with literary references to works of Virgil and Ovid, and the narrative overflows with vivid historical details about 16th-century London.

A dramatically drawn portrait of the plight and power of Elizabethan women, be they high-born or low.