Margaret Paston is the ultimate matchmaker. She is always trying to arrange marriages for her sons and daughters, particularly the daughters. Her efforts fill the entire book. She was only happy, though, with one of her son's choices for a bride and feels her daughters married beneath their socioeconomic level. She was so angry at Margery that she threw Margery out of the house and didn't associate with Margery for over ten years. Margery didn't care. Daughter Anne threatened to secretly marry the man she loved but succumbed to pressure to marry someone else who had money. Anne was strong and made the best of her situation. What Margaret did not see was that her daughters were just as strong willed as Margaret. As tough as Margaret was, her children were even tougher.

The Anne Haute subplot was the one I least enjoyed reading about. The story of how she met and fell in love with Margaret's son John was interesting. However, John put off formalizing their marriage for nine years and his decisions to fight in wars to avoid marriage was dull. Son Jonty made a good selection for a bride, financially that is, and he and wife Gilly were in love with each other.

I was surprised when a plague occurred. I had forgotten that the story took place in the 1400s. Neither the time nor the setting were prominent. Margaret's machinations were the substance of the book. This hard as nails lady carried the story well. ( )

Margaret Paston is the matriarch of an upwardly mobile East Anglian family. She is concerned that her children make advantageous marriages and preserve the family wealth, not an easy task when the country is riven by conflict. Her eldest son has made a common law marriage with a cousin of the Queen but is reluctant to consecrate this, her eldest daughter has married the family balliff and been cast off. Consumed by legal battles Margery is determined that her second son should be well married and that her remaining daughter does her duty by the family.
This is a fictionalised account of the lives of a real family. The Pastons of Norwich and Caistor left behind a large cache of letters which provide historians with information about the minutiae of everyday life during the Wars of the Roses. The Pastons were new into the local gentry and their place was always threatened by lawsuits. In this novel O'Brien has woven her customary romanticised fiction around the characters and it works extremely well. ( )