Ashe presents a jousting first installment of a four-volume fiction on the deeply contentious founder of parliament, Simon de Montfort. If the novel is thoroughly researched, as Ashe's is, ...it is all the more thoroughly imagined... lively, emotionally charged...
Kirkus
A great read...a marvelous, almost cinematic epic.
Erika Funke, Art Scene, WVIA Public Radio
A marvelous work of literature, and a great story you have here.
Bill Jaker, Off the Page, WSKG Public Radio
From the AuthorSimon's early years are riddled with gaps in the thread of information, and beset with mutually contradictory events, but central to his relationship with his king forever after was the very well documented [Chronica Majora] Churching of the Queen after the birth of Prince Edward.
Using evidences that other historians have ignored, I've come to different conclusions regarding Simon's relationship with Queen Eleanor than other writers offer. My view is based on contemporary reports of what did happen, and on the belief that the participants were behaving rationally, though highly emotionally. It is for the reader to decide if the thread of causality as I present it here is plausible.
Truth is beyond knowing.