Tread Softly by Kate Pennington
Jun. 5th, 2012 07:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
meganbmooreTread Softly is about Mary Devereaux (later Mary Paley) an Elizabethan seamstress, who is 13 at the time the book is set. There's a plot to overthrow Elizabeth, as that's a requirement for any story set at the time, but there's more focus on Mary being a seamstress for the most part, though she does get caught up in the political plot.
Mary and her father are hired by Walter Raleigh to make an amazing cloak. At which point, you go "Wait, I know what he does with cloaks..." And then he says the cloak has to get Elizabeth's attention and needs to make an impression, and it's "Oh dear. This is going to go very badly indeed for that cloak!" And then Drama and Trauma and Plot happen and it becomes "This might be the most traumatic case of an article of clothing getting dirty ever..."
The political plot works but I was more interested in the seamstress details and how Mary dealt with the "fish out of water" part of court life. Pennington apparently writes under a number of pseudonyms, but I don't think I've read any of them.
Mary and her father are hired by Walter Raleigh to make an amazing cloak. At which point, you go "Wait, I know what he does with cloaks..." And then he says the cloak has to get Elizabeth's attention and needs to make an impression, and it's "Oh dear. This is going to go very badly indeed for that cloak!" And then Drama and Trauma and Plot happen and it becomes "This might be the most traumatic case of an article of clothing getting dirty ever..."
The political plot works but I was more interested in the seamstress details and how Mary dealt with the "fish out of water" part of court life. Pennington apparently writes under a number of pseudonyms, but I don't think I've read any of them.