Heroine gains a big appetite in Sin Eater

Sin Eater

Megan Campisi Atria

ELIZABETH HAND

Set in an alternate Tudor England, Megan Campisi’s wonderful debut novel Sin Eater is a riveting depiction of hard-won female empowerment.

The novel opens as 14-year-old May, a starving orphan, steals a loaf of bread. She’s captured and thrown into a cell with 20 other women.

All are sentenced to torture or execution. Only May appears to be spared, but she learns her fate when two priests visit her. One tattoos an S onto her tongue. The other locks a brass collar with the letter S around May’s neck as he recites her sentence: She is to be a sin eater who “bears the sins of all folks in silence to her grave.

She may never confess or be absolved (unless) she serves faithfully in true piety to the Maker’s will.”

May is now mute, feared and hated even by the older sin eater who is required to be her mentor. Each sin has an accompanying food — raisins for adultery, orange marmalade for bigamy, porridge for bearing a grudge, various types of animal hearts for killings. Still, May swiftly realizes the advantages: “I will never have another hungry day!”

And she gains entry to the homes of merchants, midwives and even the court of the Virgin Queen Bethany, the ruler of this alt-england.

Before long, May is privy to secrets that point to a decades-old murder that appears to involve highly ranked members of court. But how can May determine who the murderer is?

Campisi has an impressive gift for evoking the lives of women in this reimagined Elizabethan era, when being born female was often a death sentence, by dint of sexual assault, starvation, illness or lack of education.

Not even wealthy mothers are safe from the dangers of childbirth, and Queen Bethany must maintain her power as Elizabeth I did, by encouraging foreign suitors while orchestrating intrigue at home.

May can only count to 12 and recognizes just a handful of letters. Yet despite her innocence and heartbreaking loneliness, she quickly learns that, in a world where a religious patriarchy holds sway, her outsider status gives her power.

For The Washington Post