Poor Banished Children
A Novel

by Fiorella de Maria

Ignatius, 299pp., $19.95

It’s not often that a historical novel comes along that is at once period-appropriate, psychologically plausible — and very, very difficult to put down. But Poor Banished Children, by newcomer Fiorella de Maria, fits the description. It tells the story of a mysterious castaway woman who washes up, half-dead, on the English coast in 1640. Her language is unfamiliar, but she is desperate to tell her story, which she finds a way to do in a confessional form that unfolds gradually over the course of the novel.