Rilla Askew - Prize for the Fire

"Prize for the Fire is a triumph. Rilla Askew has captured the unquenchable spirit of a singular woman, Anne Askew, as she stands alone against the violent, tumultuous England of Henry VIII's final years. Readers of literary and historical fiction will find that this deeply researched novel and its passionate, elegiac prose will stay with them long after they close the book on Anne's story. Highly recommended."—Mary Anna Evans, author of the Faye Longchamp Mystery series

"Society's net gradually and then violently tightens around a woman who desires no more—and no less—than freedom of movement, speech, conscience, and faith. In Rilla Askew's riveting Prize for the Fire, the struggles of this sixteenth-century protagonist echo in our own contemporary battles over women's voices and bodily autonomy. A deeply sensitive and ambitious act of historical imagination." —Pamela Erens, author of Eleven Hours

"Rilla Askew skillfully recreates the sequence of events that led to the execution and consequent evangelical martyrdom of Anne Askew. She sets Anne's story in its own time by carefully researching documentary evidence concerning Anne Askew and Henrician England. This historical work of fiction brings to light that era and, especially for women, the ageless struggle against patriarchal oppression in whatever form it takes." —Julie Chappell, author of Perilous Passages, the Book of Margery Kemp 1534-1934, editor Women During the English Reformation, Renegotiating Gender and Religious Identity

Fiction

The Hungry and the Haunted: Stories

Nonfiction

Most American: Notes from a Wounded Place

Prize for the Fire

"With poise and restraint, Rilla Askew's historical novel Prize for the Fire tells the brilliant, multifaceted story of an intelligent, virtuous, and indomitable woman."

--Foreword Reviews

"The author writes powerfully of this world of diminished and marginalized women when men have the duty to administer 'discipline' to maintain control of a rebellious wife, and women are prohibited from owning and reading religious texts. Prize for the Fire has the tone and feel of Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall, and it stands tall among the best of Tudor historical fiction."

--Historical Novel Society Reviews

Portrait of Anne Askew by Violet Oakley

Portrait of Anne Askew in the Governor's Reception Room at the Pennsylvania State Capitol. The text below the mural reads: "Anne Askew before the Lord Chancellor, condemned by the State, under Church of England Authority, to be burned for Heresy—refusing to recant—saying 'Rather Deathe than false to Faythe.' 1546. She was selected as a type of the Women who were ready to die for what they believe to be Truth. According to tradition she was the great-grandmother of Margaret Askew Fell, who became the wife of the Found of the Quakers—George Fox. It was from her that Margaret Fox was supposed to have inherited her marvelous spirit of endurance under persecution."

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Lincolnshire, 1537. Amid England's religious turmoil, fifteen-year-old Anne Askew is forced to take her dead sister's place in an arranged marriage. The witty, well-educated gentleman's daughter is determined to free herself from her abusive husband, harsh in-laws, and the cruel strictures of her married life. But this is the England of Henry VIII, where religion and politics are dangerously entangled. A young woman of Anne's fierce independence, Reformist faith, uncanny command of plainspoken scripture, and—not least—connections to Queen Katheryn Parr's court cannot long escape official notice, or censure.

In a deft blend of history and imagination, award-winning novelist Rilla Askew brings to life a young woman who defied the conventions of her time, ultimately braving torture and the fire of martyrdom for her convictions. A rich evocation of Reformation England, from the fenlands of Lincolnshire to the teeming religious underground of London to the court of Henry VIII, this gripping tale of defiance is as pertinent today as it was in the sixteenth century.