A Song for Else: Volume 1: The Vow

Book excerpt: Lorenz List didn't know what awaited him in the great city of Nürnberg. It was an impossibly large city for a boy from the rural hinterlands, where ancient custom, seething discontent, and (at times) a mystical fanaticism held sway. In Nürnberg, he hopes to fulfill a destiny for which he never had dared to dream. He could move from obscurity to fame, perhaps, and from poverty to wealth. In Nürnberg he begins to move among an urbane and cultivated class of people far superior (he thinks) to the peasant folk from which he came. And he finds unexpected love - a love that could prove the ruin of all his hopes. Set in early 16th century Germany, this is a tale of a young man in a time of impending revolution, felt but as yet unseen. This volume is the first part of a trilogy set against the backdrop of the dramatic events of the Protestant Reformation in Germany.