Excerpt from The Lost Book of Elizabeth Barton by Jennifer N. Brown, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

I try not to ask the question that is the only question worth asking right now: Is this how I die?

Aldington, April 1525

This is how it began. Elizabeth was nineteen years of age and ever exhausted from working on the Cobb farm. She had worked there since her father had died five years prior (her mother having been long dead from childbirth), and her uncle found a place for her there. She still was not used to how tired she became by the end of the day, tumbling onto her pallet every night desperate to close her eyes, often thinking that the sheep were better cared for than the servants and farmhands.

She and the other indoor servants—Edith and Kate, village girls, sisters—all slept on the floor of the kitchen, which was warmer in the winter, with the embers in the giant hearth still burning, and cooler in the summer, with its stone floors. She knew that she was lucky to have work and a place to sleep and food to eat. Yet at night she would fall into the most powerful slumber, every muscle aching.

And then one Easter morning, she did not wake.

There had been three glorious days of less work at the farm as the servants attended mass on Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday. Edith was annoyed that she had to poke Elizabeth in the ribs to keep her awake at church, but the chanting of the monks and the heat of the place with the bodies inside and the damp spring air outside conspired to make them all sleepy.

Sunday mass would be the longest one, but it would be followed by a feast, so the girls were happy to arise early and do their chores, getting the kitchen ready before heading out. After forty Lenten days without any meat or eggs, the whole household was looking forward to the meal that would follow. Despite their habitual fatigue, Kate, Edith, and Elizabeth had been up late chatting excitedly about the milk and eggs they would eat the next day, and wistfully hoped that some of the chicken reserved for the Cobbs would remain for the servants.

But as the sun rose on Easter day and morning light streamed through the small window of the dark kitchen, Elizabeth was stiff and unresponsive.

"Elizabeth?" Edith said, still curled around her. "Kate is up. It's time." Edith nudged her lightly with her hand, and when Elizabeth did not even stir, Edith shook her more forcefully. Edith was scared but also angry—there was always something amiss with her. Would they not receive their eggs?

"Elizabeth!" she shouted, shaking her again, but the girl lay red-faced and immobile.

When Kate came back from her toileting outside, Edith was already in tears. "She's hot with fever," Kate whispered to her sister, her hand on Elizabeth's brow.

"Like Christopher," Edith whispered back. The strapping farmhand who had caused them all to giggle whenever he passed by, hoping he would glance their way, had fallen ill with fever one day in January and was buried two days later.

"Get Mistress Cobb."

Cobb's wife was mostly kind, but she prodded Elizabeth with her toe a few times before bending over and feeling the girl's forehead with one extended finger. Later, she would feel guilty at being so irked at the inconvenience of such an ill servant on Easter morning, the long-awaited feast canceled.

Only when Cobb came in and tried to shake Elizabeth conscious, muttering, "Not another damned sick worker," did they send for the priest. Cobb wanted the last unction administered before her death; he did not want the state of that child's soul as his burden.

Elizabeth did not remember any of this; it's just what she was told. This is what she remembered: she was in a peaceful place with a soft bed like Cobb's, and a light that was warm, and she heard a voice. As the voice spoke it was as if her whole body was aflame, and she thought that she should be afraid, but she was not.

The voice said, I am with you, Elizabeth. And so is my mother, the Holy Mary. You have been chosen. I will give you a showing.

Excerpted from The Lost Book of Elizabeth Barton by Jennifer N. Brown. Copyright © 2026 by Jennifer N. Brown. Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Griffin. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.