The Dance Tree Author:Kiran Millwood Hargrave Strasbourg, 1518. At the height of summer, a lone woman begins to dance in the city square. She dances for days without rest, and when hundreds of other women join her, the city council declares a state of emergency. Musicians will be brought in to play the Devil out of the mob. — At the city's boundary, pregnant Lisbet lives with her husband... more » and mother-in-law, tending the bees that are the family's livelihood. Her quiet life is upended by the return of her sister-in-law, Nethe, from seven years in the mountains, where she has been paying penance for a crime no one will name. As the city buckles under the beat of a thousand feet, Lisbet becomes caught in a dangerous web of deceit and clandestine passion.
Set in an era of superstition, hysteria, and extraordinary change, and inspired by true events, The Dance Tree is an impassioned story of family secets, forbidden love, and women pushed to the edge.« less