I'm glad to be reviewing a historical fiction with a strong woman protagonist during women's history month. I won a digital copy of The Peddler of Wisdom by Laura Matthias Bendoly in a giveaway on the Historical Fictionistas group on Goodreads. The author sent it to me as a gift from Amazon, and this is my honest review.
Central character Irène Guéri is a healer and a diviner who resides in Les Échelles, a fictional village in the south of 17th century France. Les Échelles was invaded by an army of Sardinians. Sardinia is an island in the Mediterranean. In the 17th century, it was under Spanish rule. See the historical section in the Wikipedia article about Sardinia here. The Sardinians were led by Domenico, a tyrannical nobleman with strange obsessions that involved cruel practices.
When Domenico demanded that the villagers consult his alchemist/physician instead of Irène, I expected that she would become the victim of a witchcraft hysteria which were quite common in the 17th century. It turned out that I was being too pessimistic. While there were a few collaborators with the invaders, most of the village wanted to resist Domenico. So Irène became a rebel. I love women who take a stand.
There were other amazing female characters. One of them was Bijou, a female raptor who was very protective of Noisette, the ten year old girl who'd adopted Bijou. I was also impressed by the courage of Irène's closest friend, Simone.
There's a romance element in The Peddler of Wisdom. We even get a HEA ending. Yet I wouldn't categorize this novel as a romance. I think that the romance content is insufficient. I would say the same about characterizing The Peddler of Wisdom as a fantasy. There is a great deal of discussion about magic, but there are relatively few magical acts. I wouldn't count Irène's Tarot readings as magic. For me, they exhibit insight/intuition.
I did have some problems with the Tarot aspect of The Peddler of Wisdom. In order to discuss the most significant one, I need to explain the structure of Tarot. The Tarot is composed of Major Arcana, and Minor Arcana. The Major Arcana are the trumps. All of them have illustrations. The Minor Arcana are the court cards of each suit (King, Queen, Knave AKA Jack and Page) and what were known as"the pip cards" in a playing card deck. These are the numbered cards in the suits. Until the 20th century, these would have displayed representations of the suit in the quantity that matched the number of the card. So the Three of Cups would show three cups with no human figures or any additional illustration. The first fully pictographic deck was the Waite-Smith deck. Occultist Arthur Edward Waite was the designer and Pamela Coleman Smith was the artist. This deck was published in 1910. This means that there should be no numbered Minor Arcana in Irène's readings that are illustrated with anything other than playing card "pips" which are those representations of the suit that I mentioned previously. I suppose it's possible that a hand drawn 17th century deck might have been fully illustrated, but I wonder about the motivation. It would have been a great deal of additional work. The numbered cards could be interpreted using concepts from numerology. This is why I was so astonished to find that there were fully illustrated numbered cards in Irène's readings. I can't imagine why that would have happened when there were nothing but pips on those cards in any playing card deck that existed at the time.
I also noticed what is likely to be an editing glitch. In one of Irène's readings, she lays out the Five of Swords twice. There should only be one of each card in the deck. I find it very odd that this error went unnoticed during the editing process.
Some would say that the 17th century was too early for Tarot divination since the earliest historically recorded use of Tarot for that purpose was in the 18th century. Tarot images were originally utilized for playing cards, not as divination tools. (In my review of Braided Dimensions here, I complained that there was a Tarot reading taking place in Wales before playing cards existed in Europe. I would be inconsistent if I didn't even mention the earliness of the readings in this book.) I should point out that recorded history has tended to focus exclusively on the doings of the wealthy and powerful. Irène learned about divination with Tarot cards from a Romani woman. It seems to me at least possible that the Romani might have been reading Tarot somewhat earlier than history indicates.
The Romani are called "gypsies" in this book. I have been guilty of using the term "gypsies" myself, but that was before I learned the history of "gypsy" as a pejorative. It's enough for me that members of this ethnic group prefer Romani. My policy is that people should be called what they want to be called. Of course, 17th century Irène wouldn't have known better. It did bother me that Irène was insulting toward Romani at the end of the book. Hurtful stereotypes about the Romani have been common and they still do have a great deal of currency. Irène seemed advanced in a number of ways. That comment caused me to think less of her. It also left a bad taste in my mouth since it was literally the last thing Irène said.
The protagonist of The Peddler of Wisdom was by no means perfect, nor did she need to be perfect. Characters seem more real if they have flaws or complexity. A number of characters in Bendoly's book were well-developed including the villainous tyrant Domenico who had a background, and an unpredictable degree of ambivalence.
Despite the problems mentioned in this review, I did like The Peddler of Wisdom for the most part, and was glad to have the opportunity to read it.
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