Seeds of Faith · Book 1

Unknown Faith

Working title/s: Book 2 "Unknown Prophet," Book 3 "Unknown Saint"

In 1099, a ten-year-old Muslim girl watches the Crusaders kill her parents in Jerusalem. In 1517, Martin Luther nails his 95 Theses to a church door in Wittenberg. "Seeds of Faith" is the story of what connects them —and a woman’s history never credited.

Genre: Historical, realistic fiction
Structure: Historical Trilogy
State: Upcoming work
Rights available: World English / Translation / Film & TV
Audience: New Adult, Adult.
Word count: TBA
Timeline: From 1068 through to the twelfth century
Setting: Britain, Europe and Jerusalem
Narrative Perspective: Melita narrates in past tense

Synopsis

This trilogy spans the First Crusade to the eve of the Reformation, tracing one woman's journey from the fall of Jerusalem to the walls of an English township — and the manuscript she leaves behind that history will never credit her for.

Hill's immersive, period-authentic prose that truly breathes life into this trilogy demanding a reader's full attention. It matching the sheer scale of the journey from 1099 Jerusalem to the Reformation.

Teaser

I was standing in the courtyard helping Yamma sort lentils when the ground took me. One moment the stone was warm under my feet, the smell of cumin, the sound of Yaba's voice somewhere inside. The next I was somewhere else entirely, and my feet already knew the path.
Flat stones set into grass, grass such as I had never seen, more green than anything Jerusalem held in all its seasons. I did not choose to walk. I walked because the path required it. The stones were worn smooth and the grass between them was cool and I counted the stones as I went, the way I counted everything in song, without meaning to, without knowing why. I counted seven before the hillside stopped me.
The rock face was pale yellow-white. The colour of old bone. The colour of the limestone Yaba would press into my palm and say, this is what we are made of, this city, this family, this. The same stone. But I did not know this hill.
Someone had cut into it. Not a door - I knew doors. This was lower, rougher, a decision made in the rock by something patient. Darker inside than the night sky above it. Darker than the space behind closed eyes. Beside it sat a stone of enormous size, the weight of ten men, I thought, perhaps twelve. A grinding stone was the only name I had for it, but there was no grain here, no flour, no mill, nothing to explain such a thing lying in the grass of a hillside. It had been moved. The ground told me so the raw white scrape of fresh limestone, the torn earth that had not yet had time to settle or dry. Someone or something had sealed this place. Someone or something had opened it.
I stood and the question came to me whole, had this held someone in, or held the world out?