Consigned in a cold, arranged marriage to Berenger de Roquefort, the lord of the remote medieval village of Montaillou in the French Pyrenees, we follow Beatrice as she struggles with life, a life in which women are scarcely valued, except to produce an heir. She is raped and subjected to the prolonged and abusive propositioning of Father Clergue, the village priest. She loses her husband, her sons, her home. And meanwhile the Inquisition is extending...