G. M. Baker - Author
Books
The Cuthbert's People Series (historical fiction)
Christian Anglo-Saxons relied upon their local saints who replaced in their affections the old local gods they had looked to in their pagan past. For the people of Northumbria, the greatest of their local saints was Cuthbert of Lindisfarne. They were Cuthbert's people.
The series traces the repercussions of the Viking raid on Lindisfarne of 793 in the life of Attor, an aging Northumbrian thegn, his ambitious slave-born wife, Edith, and his daughters, the beautiful but wistful Elswyth and the accomplished but bitter Hilda, as the raid entwines their lives in the affairs of abbesses, kings, and Vikings.
Book 1 - The Wistful and the Good
"His prose is almost voluptuously rich" -- Historical Novel Society
Before the Vikings set foot on English soil, the Northern kingdom of Northumbria knew a golden age, an age of artists and poets, of scholars and saints. Elswyth of Twyford was the golden child of that golden age, blessed with beauty, charm, and a gift for entertaining and peace-making in the halls of great lords.
Though her father’s name has never been heard in the counsel of kings, Elswyth is promised to an Ealdorman's son and will one day host kings at her table. But in the year of grace 793, the peace of Northumbria is shattered by the vicious Viking raid on its greatest jewel, the rich monastery of Lindisfarne. People ask if God himself has abandoned them, and great lords thirst for any chance to spill Norse blood.
Elswyth finds herself caught between old friends suddenly cast in the image of devils incarnate, and the lust for vengeance of the man she is to marry. One false step could lead to the loss of the promised marriage and the death or enslavement of people she loves, both English and Norse.
Book 2 - St. Agnes and the Selkie
"Beautiful prose, evocative descriptions and characters one cannot help but love—what more can one possibly want?" -- Historical Novel Society
Anglo-Saxon women of royal blood sometimes became abbesses ruling great religious houses of both men and women. Some, like Hilda of Whitby, became among its greatest saints. But for others, the role, with its responsibilities and its privations, cannot have been easy to bear.
Thrust into the leadership of Whitby Abbey by a dynastic bargain, Mother Wynflaed, a king's daughter once engaged to a nobleman's son, attempts to live her responsibilities with grace both in the abbey and as councilor to her nephew, the young king of Northumbria. But though many call her mother, in her heart she burns with the desire for a daughter of her own.
When a beautiful young woman is found on the abbey doorstep, soaked and silent, Wynflaed feels as if she has birthed her out of the sea. She names her Agnes and offers her a mother’s love. But Agnes shuns all affection and pulls down penances on her head for a sin she will not confess. As she unravels Agnes's terrible secret, Wynflaed must struggle with the unbearable question of whether Agnes is to stay or to go.
Book 3 - The Needle of Avocation
"Engagingly written with beautifully developed characters and a vividly depicted, well-researched historical backdrop, The Needle of Avocation is a little gem brimming with life and colour. And Hilda—well, who can possibly resist this serious, brutally honest but socially awkward teenager, who over the space of a week leaves childhood behind to blossom into a young but determined and brave woman? Not me! An absolutely wonderful read." -- Historical Novel Society
In a society held together by blood, oaths, and personal fealty, marriage is anything but a romantic affair. Hilda is the second sister, the plain one, the overlooked, the put upon. Her mother, Edith, has tricked the local ealdorman into betrothing his only son and heir to Hilda, a role that should have fallen to her enchanting older sister Elswyth, who was kidnapped by vikingar three years earlier.
On the way to her wedding, Hilda meets a heartbroken king, his petulant child bride, an abbess who wrestles with a great torment, and the shy young man she is supposed to marry. As the days wind down to a wedding wanted by no one but Edith, Hilda discovers that each of these people has, like she, had their lives thrown into turmoil and misery by the actions of the now absent Elswyth.
As a knot of secrets and lies begins to unravel, threatening disgrace, bloodshed, and slavery, the painfully forthright Hilda must decide whether to keep pulling on the string or violate her conscience by knotting it up again.
Book 4 - The Wanderer and the Way
Theodemir returns footsore and disillusioned to his uncle’s villa in Iria Flavia where he meets Agnes, his uncle’s gatekeeper, a woman of extraordinary beauty. He falls immediately in love. But Agnes has a fierce, though absent, husband; a secret past; another name, Elswyth; and a broken heart.
Witteric, Theodemir’s cruel and lascivious uncle has is own plans for Agnes. When the king of Asturias ask Theodemir to undertake an embassy on his behalf to Charles, King of the Franks, the future Charlemagne, Theodemir plans to take Agnes with him, to keep her out of Witteric’s clutches.
But though Agnes understand her danger as well as anyone, she refuses to go. And Theodemir dares not leave without her.
Lady Isabel and the Elf Knight (fairytale retelling)
"Reads as though one of the darker Grimm’s Fairy Tales has been turned into a novel" -- Catholic Reads
The princess who rescues herself without the aid of a prince is not a new story. In the old Scottish ballad, Lady Isabel and the Elf Knight, the Elf Knight kidnaps Isabel and carries her off to his glade in the greenwood where he has murdered many maidens before her. But resourceful Isabel lulls him to sleep and kills him with his own sword.
The novel begins where the ballad ends, with Isabel alone in the elf glade with nothing but the Elf Knight's horse, horn, and sword. These she takes, and with their aid she conquers the dangers of the wild wood and finds her way home. But something old is waking in Isabel, something that longs for the gallop and the chase, for bright sun and the rush of wind against the cheek, for glimmering steel and bright blood and the dying of light in the eyes of the slain. Isabel is losing herself and within her the Elf Maiden grows in strength and fury.
The Wrecker's Daughter
Welcome to St. Rose, Cornwall, where the merry villagers make their living by wrecking ships and stealing their cargoes, where weddings are interrupted to loot shipwrecked schooners, where the parson is in the wrecker's pay and preaches a wrecker's gospel and Christmas is celebrated with fist fights and pistol shots.
Meet Hannah Pendarves, first daughter of the village, who thinks anyone from as far away as the next town is a foreigner and not to be trusted. But Hannah's small world cracks open when she discovers that her father is part of a vast syndicate of wreckers and smugglers.
When the syndicate places Hannah as a spy in the house of Francis Keverne, a kindly and upright Falmouth shipping agent, Hannah begins to question the wrecker's gospel and regret the blood that is on her hands. Now the wrecker's daughter must choose between her father and Francis while with every step she feels the devil, and the syndicate, snapping at her heels.
Ordinary Eccentricity (travel memoir)
Travel is not really about the destination or even the points of interest along the way. It is about the road itself. On Route 66 in particular, It is not the great monuments or the great attractions that matter, but the ever unfolding view, the thousand tiny attractions, a miscellany that slowly reveals its unity. There is much that is eccentric along the route, but it is, for the most part, the eccentricity of ordinary people, both those who built it and those who preserve and memorialize it.
Route 66 is a museum to ordinary eccentricity. On Route 66 you are doing what everyone who ever drove it was doing. You are driving to a real destination. You are following the Mother Road for real. No other museum gives you the opportunity to do the thing for real the way Route 66 does.
This is an account of the transcontinental road trip that my wife, Anna, and I took in the spring of 2018 and of a second trip that we took the following year. We found much of what Route 66 and the other roads we took go through is ordinary. Some of it is goofy. Some of it is kitschy. Some of it is blatantly commercial. Some of it is gorgeous. Some of it is ugly. All of which makes it human: a human artifact and a human place, a place of ordinary eccentricity.