With profound sensitivity, the author of Feathers and Trumpets breathes beauty and contemporary relevance into the life of the 12th century historical personage Hildegard of Bingen. A religious visionary, Hildegard is well-known today among students of sacred medieval music for her ethereal Gregorian chants, and among scientists for her learned treatises on natural history and the medicinal uses of plants, trees and animals to cure human disease. But it is her deep faith and her strength of character that inspires author Joyce Ray and which she unfolds to us in this book. With language and images that are poetic and lyrical, and with a structure which is unconsciously simple and straight-forward, the author transports the reader from the ordinariness of the material and mundane to that of spiritual beauty, power and grace.
Although the book is catalogued as juvenile fiction, readers of all ages will find a quiet beauty in the telling and a source of inspiration in the reading of Hildegard’s courage, unflagging spirit, deep intellect and self-discipline in facing the social, physical and gender obstacles in her life and of her time.