Fiction

Michaels / Elizabeth Peters / Barbara Mertz is one of my favorite authors.

This one focuses on a young woman trying to recover from the sudden death of her beloved father and detested mother. Heather Tradescant, who received a million dollars from the parents' life insurance policy, makes a sentimental pilgrimage of historic gardens in England. She and her father had planned the trip when he was still alive. They had taken landscaping classes and were avid gardeners. Although there is no proof they're related, They bear the last name of a pair of noted garden designers of the 16th Century, John Tradescant the Elder and John Tradescant the Younger.

Heather, a high school English and history teacher as well as coach of a championship soccer team back home in Missouri, has been brainwashed all her life by her mother into thinking that she is homely, plain, fat, unattractive and flat-chested. She acknowledges being some 20 pounds overweight and husky in build. Her self-described appearance is unusual for the heroine of a Gothic romance novel. After the unexpected death of her parents in a car accident, she quits her job, sells the house and embarks on the garden tour.

A multimillionaire with a passion for old gardens convinces Heather to help him restore the gardens at an estate he had recently purchased. The estate supposedly once belonged to a fictional man connected with the Pendle witch trials of 1612. There are hints that the property contains a very old maze concealed in a wild tangle of trees, bushes, vines and thorns through which nobody is able to penetrate.

Witchcraft and modern Wicca are key elements in the novel. Furthermore, the story includes one of the most accurate explanations of modern Wiccan beliefs and practices I've seen in fiction. My guess is that Michaels was trying to make up for some of the inaccurate witch stereotypes she included in a few of her earliest novels.

Published in 1997 by HarperCollins, "The Dancing Floor" was released in paperback the following year by Harper Paperbacks.

This is a wonderfully entertaining and educational read.