THE PLAGUE

An orphan becomes an innocent pawn in a dangerous political plot that carries her from London to Bordeaux while the Black Death cuts a swath through 14th-century Europe. Fifteen-year-old Nell escapes a life of poverty when her amazing likeness to Princess Joan earns her the job of stand-in for the princess. En route to her marriage to Prince Pedro of Castile, the princess succumbs to the plague. Her wily brother Edward, the Black Prince, devises a cunning plan to have Nell masquerade as the princess so the marriage can still take place. Nell, her brother George and a young soldier escape into countryside ravaged by plague, where they are relentlessly pursued by the Black Prince and his army of charmed rats. From start to finish, Nell’s lively first-person narrative conveys a palpable atmosphere of deception and terror, propelling readers from one hair-raising event to the next. Despite the contrived ending that finds Nell a prisoner in the Tower of London, Dahme successfully blurs fact and fiction to capture the pervasive horror that infected life during the plague. (Historical fantasy. 12-15)