Conditions of Faith

Emily Stanton has just taken a first-class degree in classical civilisation at the University of Melbourne, and her father hopes she will go on to Cambridge. Instead, in 1923, she marries Georges Elder, an engineer ten years older, raised in Chartres, who is in Australia to design a harbour crossing for Sydney. In Paris his work absorbs him, his devout mother and aunt in Chartres oppress her, and a priest seduces her beneath the cathedral, leaving her pregnant. Sent to Tunisia to recover her health, she meets archaeologists at the ruins of Carthage and is drawn into the story of the early Christian martyr Perpetua. Her rekindled hunger for learning, and for a reason to live, sets her against what society expects of a wife and mother.

AI-generated summary

About the book

Form

Novel

Genres

Historical, Love (assigned by AI)

Set in

Australia, France, Tunisia, 1920s

First published

2000

Author's age

64 when first published

ISBN

9780684869353 (Scribner, United States)

9780340766668 (Hodder & Stoughton, United Kingdom)

9781742377346 (Allen & Unwin, Australia)

More

Wikidata