Book Review for GODWINE KINGMAKER by E. Thomas Behr, Ph.D., author of Blood Brothers: Courage and Treachery on the Shores of Tripoli

A wonderfully executed, richly-developed historical novel!

Readers who enjoy tightly written, compelling story-telling with deeply engaging characters are in for a real treat with Mercedes Rochelle’s Godwine Kingmaker: Part One of The Last Great Saxon Earls. This is historical fiction in the grand tradition of Hope Muntz’s The Golden Warrior and Mary Stewart’s and T. H. White’s Arthurian sagas.

Godwine, an18-year-old Saxon sheepherder, accidentally meets and then befriends a marauding Danish nobleman whom he finds lost and wandering in the thick forest near his Wiltshire home. That friendship changes forever not only Godwine’s life, but the history of England as well.
Mercedes Rochelle takes us back into the dim past, almost before recorded history, when the nation we now know as England was being forged in the fiery crucible of war and treachery. Six hundred years before, invading Saxons had overrun England when the Roman Empire collapsed. Now the Saxons had gone from being conquerors to conquered as incessant waves of ferocious Danes and Norwegian Vikings attacked, plundered, and eventually settled in England, carving out a new kingdom for themselves in blood.

Godwine’s father, Wulfnoth, Thegn of Sussex, former commander of the Saxon King Aethelred’s fleet. had been wrongly betrayed and disgraced. Absent a father’s influence, Godwine’s ambition causes him to pledge his loyalty to his new Danish friend, Ulf, and to Ulf’s lord, the Danish king Canute the Great. Through his skill in war and politics, Godwine rises steadily in authority. Within 20 years he has become Earl of Wessex, one of the richest and most powerful men in England. Lacking royal blood, he cannot aspire to the kingship. But he does dream of the time when one of his fiercely competitive sons, Swegn, Harold, or Tostig, might unite England under a Saxon king.

In Godwine Kingmaker, the past becomes alive. Rochelle lets you walk around London and Winchester a thousand years ago. And for many readers, this is our distant past. Here’s the account of the Winter Solstice celebration that has now become our Christmas.

Inside the great hall … the carved Jul log was sprinkled with mead and decorated with dry sprigs of pine and cones. As it was lit, musicians plucked the strings of their harps and started the singing. Soon the hall was echoing with laughter … the children filled their shoes with straw, carrots, and sugar lumps and set them out by the fire to feed Odin’s flying eight-legged horse Sleipnir. … In return, Odin wold leave the children small gifts and sweets as a reward.

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