The Broken Font: A Story of the Civil War, Vol. 1 (of 2)

England in 1640 drifts toward catastrophe. At Milverton House, Sir Oliver Heywood and his family move through their days in an uneasy calm, unaware that the political tempest brewing in London will soon shatter their world. When conversation turns to the fate of dissenters like Mr. Prynne, the cracks in their pastoral peace begin to show. Sherer traces how civil war seeps into the hearth, the nursery, the chapel. This is not a novel of battles and politics, but of families caught in the grinding machinery of conviction and consequence, watching their world collapse under the weight of conflicting loyalties. The broken font of the title is both literal and symbolic: a church shattered, an order sundered, the baptismal waters muddied with the blood of a nation at war with itself. For readers who crave historical fiction that prizes psychological depth over spectacle, that understands how profoundly private life suffers under public catastrophe.