PATRON PICKS--World Without End

Christine's Pick:  World Without End, by Ken Follett

Synopsis:
In 1989, Ken Follett astonished the literary world with The Pillars of the Earth, a sweeping epic novel set in twelfth-century England centered on the building of a cathedral and many of the hundreds of lives it affected.  Critics were overwhelmed and readers everywhere hoped for a sequel.

World Without End takes place in the same town of Kingsbridge, two centuries after the townspeople finished building the exquisite Gothic cathedral that was at the heart of The Pillars of the Earth.  The cathedral and the priory are again at the center of a web of love and hate, greed and pride, ambition and revenge, but this sequel stands on its own.  This time, the men and women among an extraordinary cast of characters find themselves at a crossroad of new ideas -- about medicine, commerce, architecture, and justice.  In a world where proponents of the old ways fiercely battle those with progressive minds, the intrigue and tension quickly reach a boiling point against the devastating backdrop of the greatest natural disaster ever to strike the human race:  the Black Death.

Christine says:  I was happily immersed in the town of Kingsbridge following the life of a new builder/carpenter and watching the town go through the plague.  Once again his novels always make me happy I was not a woman living during those times.