First line: "I must write this account, and when I have finished, I will burn it."

"Dolssa is a young gentlewoman with uncanny gifts, on the run from an obsessed friar determined to burn her as a heretic for the passion she refuses to tame. Botille is a wily and charismatic peasant, a matchmaker running a tavern with her two sisters in a tiny seaside town.

The year is 1241; the place, Provensa, what we now call Provence, France—a land still reeling from the bloody crusades waged there by the Catholic Church and its northern French armies.

When the matchmaker finds the mystic near death by a riverside, Botille takes Dolssa in and discovers the girl’s extraordinary healing power. But as the vengeful Friar Lucien hunts down his heretic, the two girls find themselves putting an entire village at the mercy of murderers."

A slow, rich read full of characterization that shares a unique discussion of holy women declared heretic by power-hungry men of the 13th century. The Passion of Dolssa provides another "ride or die" friendship story akin to Code Name Verity. And just to clear the water, Dolssa's passion is for Jesus, not Botille (and a tear is shed for a potential lesbian romance set in the High Middle Ages).