"Bishop's Lynn, England, 1413. Forty-year-old Margery Kempe has barely survived giving birth to her fourteenth child. Fearing that another pregnancy might kill her, she makes a vow of celibacy, but she can't trust her husband to keep his end of the bargain. Desperate for counsel, she visits the famous anchoress Dame Julian of Norwich. Margery confesses that she has been haunted by visceral, sensual images of the divine which send her into helpless fits of weeping. Julian then shares a confession of her own : she has written a secret book about her mystical visions, Revelations of Divine Love. Julian entrusts this dangerous text to Margery, who sets off on the adventure of a lifetime to spread Julian's radical, female vision of the divine. As Margery blazes her pilgrim's trail across Europe and the Near East, she finds a unique, spiritual path for a woman of her time, not in a cloistered cell like Julian, but in the worldly bustle of life with all of its peril and wonder." -- Back cover.