"In my dreams I smelled the dark sulfurous stink of a passing witch and pulled up the coarse blanket over my head and whispered "Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us," to shield me from my nightmare of terror. Then I heard shouting and the terrifying crackle of flames and I came awake in a rush of panic..."

From its mesmerizing opening scene, The Wise Woman is an extraordinary feat of storytelling. Set in Henry VIII's England, it is a haunting story of power and loss, love and betrayal...of one woman's struggle to survive in a man's world, and of the dark thrilling forces of magic that beckon her. At its center is Alys, a complex and fascinating creation -- a cleaver and ambitious young witch, granted powers she never wanted and doomed to desire a man who would very well destroy her.

On the night that the soldiers burn and sack the abbey that has been her refuge, there is only one place for Alys to go - the cold wretched hovel that is the home of the wise woman Morach. As a child, Alys eagerly learned Morach's ways of country healing, but now, despising the grinding poverty and frightened by Morach's black arts, Alys years for escape. As if in dark answer to her prayers, she is summoned to the castle to treat the ailing, old Lord Hugh.

Amid the lavish world of the court -- a seductive maelstrom of excitement, temptation, and danger -- Alys comes face to face with the handsome young Lord Hugo. It was Hugo who sacked the abbey...and everywhere she turn, he is there, his joyful smile cutting through her like lightening.

But Hugo has a wife, the voluptuous barren Catherine, who watches Alys with shrewd suspicion and would not hesitate to accuse her of witchcraft. powerless to deny her furious, unbidden desire and desperate to control her own destiny, Alys makes a reckless grab for power, position, wealth, and safety. Unleashing the dark forces quivering within her, she calls upon all the powers of sex and magic to lure Hugo into an ecstasy he never imagined...