Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary

"Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary" by Anne Manning is a historical fiction that transports readers to 17th-century England through the diary entries of Mary Powell, a teenage bride struggling to find her place as the wife of the famous poet John Milton during the English Civil War; the story begins as Mary approaches her seventeenth birthday, revealing the financial and political challenges of her family, her mother's objections to her father's decisions, and her own feelings about love, duty, and a quickly approaching marriage to a man she barely knows, resulting in a compelling mix of girlish dreams, harsh reality, and the demanding expectations of the era.