Rating: 5 stars out of 5 ★★★★★
When he was just a youth, orphaned Faris was flogged as a thief at the pillar in the Zidar town square and left to die. A kind old man took him in, healed him, gave him a home and taught him a profession. Now Faris is the herbalist who cares for the injured and ill of Zidar. He spends his lonely days haunted by his past and insecure of his place in the community. Until the night he saves a dying slave from the same pillar upon which he’d been flogged.
Boro is a former soldier has spent who has spent his last decade as slave. Faris uses his herbs and ointments to hear Boro’s physical wounds, but both men carry scars that can’t be seen. When these two broken men find solace in each other, constraints of law and social class in 15th century Bosnia make it difficult to sustain the fragile happiness they’ve found together.
From the first page, the imagery in this book grabbed my imagination and created a rich world around me that I could have stepped right into. The story has an almost a fairy-tale feel to it. It’s a simple story at heart, but lush and rich and timeless and full of meaning. Beautifully written. There is certainly brutality, slavery, torture, pain and angst here, but despite that the story didn’t come across as dark to me. It showed the bad, yes, but also the kindness and goodness that can be there as well. Hope and love definitely were the overriding notes this book left with me.
I enjoyed both of the main characters, but also felt that I knew many of the other inhabitants of that quaint little town. I wish I could go for a walk across that bridge with them, into the town where we’d say hi to the townspeople and I feel like I’d recognize them. Then stroll on into the woods to gather herbs. She painted it so well with her words that I’d feel right at home.
This is a beautiful hurt/comfort story. I adored the way the love between these guys grew and deepened as they got to know one another. The perfect way they complimented each other and helped each other to heal inside even as Faris was healing Boro physically. This one totally touched my heart and is one of my favorite by this author at the time of this review.
Seemed to me that the title had a two-fold meaning. . . the obvious one of the stone pillar used for the beatings, but also later there is a reference to Faris, who thought of himself as a worthless thief almost right up to the end, being proclaimed by the town leader to be a pillar of the community. . . and YES, his character totally shined out all through the book but especially with how the whole town rallied around him at the end. So it seemed there are two pillars. . . the stone one in the town square… but Faris was ‘the pillar’ too. And it’s him, more than the inanimate one, that was the center of this outstanding book.
The final chapter’s events fit. From early on, I had a feeling it would end up needing to happen that way or something similar given their world, but I think Faris was right in his assessment that Boro himself needed it to be that way, too.
The cover by Shobana Appavu is absolutely gorgeous and perfectly fitting for this book. Evocative of a fairy tale, just like the story.
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Book Details:
Scattered Thoughts and Rogue Words 