Monica Ferris has written under many names. One of the first was Margaret of Shaftesbury. This book is put together from four "chapbooks" she wrote back in the 1980s as a study for a character she'd'd invented: Margaret of Shaftesbury, Abbess. She lived from 1400 to 1485, mostly in a small nunnery in the foothills of the Cotswolds called the Abbey of the White Stag (Abatia Cervi Albi, after the vision of St. Eustace). AKA Deer Abbey. She wrote about one a year, and now the chapbooks have been drawn together to make a novel of a little over two hundred pages, if you include the endnotes. The chapbooks were thoroughly researched but lightly written, self-published, and earned her a Laurel in the Society for Creative Anachronism.