Uprising (The Fitzjohn Duology)

Only a daughter of two worlds can save England's future.

England, 1381 AD: Blanche Fitzjohn is an outcast in her small coastal village. Not only is she the illegitimate daughter of John of Gaunt, the man responsible for her neighbors' over-taxation, but she possesses strange abilities: hearing sound from miles away and smelling people's emotions.

She takes solace in her studies with the local wisewoman and in her friendship with Geoff, a groom at the local manor. Until the day Henry of Lancaster, Blanche's half-brother, brings her news of an arranged marriage to Sir Thomas Prescott, Constable of the Tower of London. Although she smells cruelty on him, Blanche agrees to marry Thomas in the hopes that her influence may help better the lives of Geoff and all England's villeins.

But soon, the peasants' discontent turns to revolt. Though her heart is of the people, Blanche's nobility makes her an enemy to the rebels. To save herself and Henry from the executioner's ax, Blanche must use every power at her disposal, even those she once considered a curse.

J.E. Rizzo is a life-long history fanatic and writer of historical fiction, and her work can be found in Vanity Fair, The Boston Globe, The Guardian, The Tudor Times, Tudor Life Magazine, Scary Mommy, and Ultrarunning Magazine. Rizzo's debut novel, Uprising, Book One of the Fitzjohn Duology, is forthcoming from Literary Wanderlust, and tells the story of Blanche Fitzjohn, a fourteenth-century neurodivergent woman whose perceived disabilities become superpowers during England's peasant uprising of 1381.Rizzo won Manuscript Academy's Agent Choice Award in 2024, and her article Past and Precedence: Abortion Law in the Middle Ages and Its Use to Overturn Roe v. Wade won History Inquiry's Medieval History Writing Challenge.By day, Rizzo works in Human Resources-a field offering more than ample opportunity to observe the follies and fancies of humankind. Before her career in HR, Rizzo worked as an opera singer, a professional baker, and a dog walker. These days, when not writing she can be found running ultramarathons through the forests and mountains of New England, knitting, reading, sewing, baking, or performing any number of (what some might call) old-lady hobbies. She also keeps busy caring for her two children and forty-seven houseplants, making her husband carry heavy things and cook her gourmet meals, and rehabilitating her rescue dog and semi-feral ginger cat.Read more about her at www.jennifererizzo.com.