About the Book

England, 1370: Twelve-year-old Elinor is enclosed with an anchoress, Lady Adela, in a cell at Wenfair Abbey. Other than occasional visits from one of the abbey monks, Elinor has only the intense and mercurial Adela for company—until she becomes aware of the women who visit the cell at night, whispering through the window when they find themselves unhappily pregnant, and desperate for holy—and practical—help. 

In 2017, 35-year-old Liz Pace is an adjunct professor of medieval studies in upstate New York. She wrote her PhD dissertation on purgatory, but she is fascinated by anchoresses. Liz is pregnant for the first time, and preparing for her presentation at an important academic conference, which she hopes will land her a book contract, but which instead inspires a research trip to England—where she discovers a long-lost medieval book of hours, inscribed with the name Elinor.

Ordinary Devotion traces the lives of two women separated by hundreds of years, as they navigate the needs and demands of the body, and the burdens—and rewards—of faith, obligation, and devotion.

Praise for Ordinary Devotion

Holt-Browning is novelist, poet, and editor, and these skills are evident in the clean, active prose and ability to propel the novel at a steady pace.

—Susan Yung, Chronogram

Through parallel narratives, Holt-Browning offers a rich, reflective story that examines the limitations and freedoms arising from physical and metaphorical enclosures. …Holt-Browning's writing style is lyrical and evocative, with vivid descriptions that immerse readers in medieval and contemporary settings. The dual timelines are interwoven seamlessly, with smooth transitions that draw thematic parallels between the two narratives.

—Jonathan Crain, Substack

Ordinary Devotion sneaks up on your heart and brain with deftly drawn spiritual drama, becoming next to impossible to put down … Kudos to Kristen Holt-Browning for a resonant and thought-provoking debut.

—Ann Pyburn Craig, Blue Stone Press

The modern and medieval stories spiral in and out of each other, intricate and vivid as the letters of illuminated manuscripts, connected by the mysteries of paradox: confinement and freedom, loss, and fulfillment. No reader will remain unmoved by Elinor’s extraordinary devotion both to Adela, with her secret compassion for women, and to the green, sensual living world beyond the cell.

—Elizabeth Cunningham, author of the Maeve Chronicles