Signe has tended the thresholds of Aldenmere her whole life. She knows which doorframe holds grief and which holds quiet satisfaction, which path through the ancient Athwood changes with the season, which household needs her before they know it themselves. She has done the keeper's work for two years without anyone formally acknowledging that she is doing it — including herself. When her brother arrives at the Long Fire to announce his commitment to the Order of the Covenant, the new faith's military brotherhood, Signe understands that the world she tends is reorganizing around something that has no place for her in it. And when a miller's threshold refuses to settle no matter how many times she works it, and a new-faith merchant woman arrives at her door with a sick daughter and jaw set with pride, Signe begins to suspect that the certainty she has always performed may not be the same thing as the wisdom she was trained to carry. The Keeper of Aldenmere is a cozy fantasy about claiming what you are — fully, with the uncertainty intact. Set in a forest-edge village where two faith traditions share a harvest table without sharing a language, it follows one woman's quiet, thorny journey from performing a role to inhabiting it. The magic is in the earth beneath bare feet and the wood of old doorframes. The belonging is earned in second cups of tea left where someone can reach them, and in the small, honest gestures of two people from different worlds deciding to be decent to each other. For readers of T. Kingfisher and Naomi Novik.
