Matrix

"Beautifully written and evocative, Matrix is a stunning historical fiction set in 12th Century England. Marie de France, deemed unmarriable by Eleanor d'Aquitaine, is sent to live in a crumbling Abbey. Over the next fifty years, Marie slowly turns the decrepit Abbey into a formidable source of power. It is easy to lose yourself in the lush prose, in Marie's ambitions and hunger, to feel the force of her desire to protect the women she is in charge of. Her vision for this Abbey is clear: to make it strong and impenetrable, its own world free of men and of oppression, and she will stop at nothing to make it so."