Come Rack! Come Rope!

Derbyshire, 1580s. The Elizabethan persecution of Catholics has made harboring a priest an act of treason punishable by death. Into this dangerous world come Robin and Barbara, young lovers whose future together seems certain until a fugitive priest arrives at Barbara's family home, demanding they choose between safety and faith. What follows is a devastating reckoning with the cost of conviction. The two must decide whether to betray their priest and live, or protect him and face the rack, the rope, and eternal separation. Benson, a convert from Anglicanism to Catholicism, writes with the intimate knowledge of a man who understands both the beauty and the brutality of what he describes. This is not a story of heroes who triumph but of ordinary people who discover within themselves an extraordinary grace. The title comes from St. Edmund Campion's letter to Catholics after his torture, and the novel carries his spirit: a fierce, tender witness to what belief demands when it costs everything.