This book takes the lives of five real women, living during some of the most turbulent times in Scottish history, and through their surviving records gives us the experience of living at that time. This is always a difficult task as the written record is patchy, and women's lives in particular are not well recorded.However this does a good job of weaving a narrative from their specific records and more general historical sources. The women's positions range from the daughter of a minor lord to eventually a queen and a nun, poorer women are even less well recorded. The author does a good job in describing what their roles and responsibilities would be and how they were affected by political events.I would advise bookmarking the genealogical tables in the appendix, to follow the complex family interrealtions.

In the end I enjoyed this book more more than I expected to. As someone who has read a fair amount of 'straight' history, I wasn't sure of this framing device, but it does work quite well. For someone, perhaps, who has been reading historical fiction and wants something more 'academic', this would make a great introduction to the period. ( )