Because of Conscience: Being a Novel Relating to the Adventures of Certain Huguenots in Old New York

In colonial New York, where French Protestant families lived under the shadow of the Cross, a young woman's loyalties will be tested. Alaine Hervieu has known peace in the home of her foster-mother Michelle, finding comfort in simple pleasures and the company of her teasing cousin Étienne. But peace shatters when she learns her absent father has declared himself a Huguenot, an act that could mean death. With violence against Protestants tightening like a noose around New York's French community, Alaine faces an impossible choice: remain safe in the shadows, or venture into danger to seek the father she barely knows. Amy Ella Blanchard renders eighteenth-century New York with careful period detail, but the novel's heart beats in Alaine's struggle between faith and survival, family and conscience. The story asks what we owe to those who came before us, and whether belonging is a matter of blood or belief.