Fiander's Widow: A Novel

Rosalie Fiander is twenty-three and a widow. Her husband Elias was old enough to be her father, and now that he's gone, the village has opinions about what she should do next. Should she remarry? Sell the farm? The community watches her every move, waiting to judge her choices, while Rosalie must somehow keep the land running and forge a life that's truly her own. This is a quiet, sharp novel about the particular loneliness of being young and unmoored in a world that insists on defining you by who you belong to. Francis writes with gentle precision about the small cruelties of rural society and one woman's attempt to find solid ground after everything has been taken from her control.