A Cloud of Outrageous Blue by Vesper Stamper

A peasant girl in pre-Plague England holds the key to key to healing and “outrageous blue” hope.

*A Cloud of Outrageous Blue by Vesper Stamper. Knopf, 2020, 297 pages.

Reading Level: Teen, ages 12-15

Recommended for: ages 13-18

A Fearful Portent

Life in a late-medieval English village has plusses and minuses for Edyth le Sherman. On the down side, she’s the odd girl out, due to her wild hair and uncanny ability to hear colors and smell sounds (synesthesia)–a trait she’s learned to keep to herself. But she also enjoys the love of her family and has begun to return the meaningful looks that come her way from the stonemason’s son. Life takes a sudden drastic turn when her father is murdered on a false charge and her mother dies in childbearing soon after. Her older brother, low on options, arranges to send Edyth to the Priory of St. Christopher, where she will be safe and provided for.

She kicks against this notion—hard—but soon discovers that the Priory, too, has its plusses and minuses. The former includes Alice, an intellectual who’s also chatty and down-to-earth, as well as calm and saintly Prioress Margaret. Edyth also has the opportunity to learn the art of mixing precious paints, especially lapis lazuli, for the scriptorium and its illuminated manuscripts. At the same time Sub-Prioress Agnes, a smug tyrant-in-waiting, promises trouble, as doesthe mad novice Felisia, nicknamed Dragon. Edyth, sensitive to more than colors, feels an unrest beginning with the Dragon and extending to the whole world: a terrible portent under a surface calm. The plague is coming.

Light in Darkness

The setting corresponds to the beginning of the Great Plague of 1349, during which anywhere from one-fourth to one-half of the European population was wiped out. Death stalks the nearby villages before it hunkers down within the Priory itself. Edyth discovers a possible cure, but darkness threatens to devour the flickering light. While growing increasingly grim with the advent of the plague, the story still glows with “outrageous blue”—a persistent hope based on the mystery of resurrection:

Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains alone. But if it dies, it produces much fruit”

John 12:24, quoted in the Epilogue

Edyth is a strong-willed and contrary character nonetheless open to grace and change. Her story illustrates the author’s contention (don’t miss the Author Note) that medieval women, though nameless for the most part, contributed richly to medieval culture and history. “History is only the story of human beings making choices, and how those choices intersect.” They had their time; we have ours. Their time was harsh and grim and often very dark, particularly in the plague time. Readers should be warned that this novel goes into some of those dark places; it might not be for everybody. But even in the present day, with all our conveniences and comforts, darkness remains in the human soul. Our choices matter too, for lives don’t “have to be epic to be meaningful.” What choices will we make? A Cloud of Outrageous Blue, with luminous illustrations by the author, raises that excellent question.

Considerations:

• Some mild curse words and use of the Lord’s name, which isn’t always profanity.
• Edyth and Mason, the young man she loves, spend a night together that implies sex, but obliquely.

Overall Rating: 4.75 (out of 5)

• Worldview/moral value: 4.5
• Artistic/literary value: 5

Read more about our ratings here.                 

More at Redeemed Reader:

• Review: We gave a star to Vesper Stamper’s verse novel, What the Night Sings.
• Review: We also gave a star to Julie Berry’s The Passion of Dolssa, which occurs in a similar time with similar themes.
• Resource: Audio Resources and Picture Books about the Middle Ages for middle-schoolers.

We are participants in the Amazon LLC affiliate program; purchases you make through affiliate links like the one below may earn us a commission. Read more here.