The Essex Serpent

A good old fashioned novel with a lot of story to get lost in. Cora Seaborne is freed from a terrible marriage by the death of her husband. The doctor who treated Michael Seaborne has fallen in love with her, but she is focused on experiencing and enjoying her freedom. She goes to Essex to look for fossils and comes into a community of people who believe there is a sea monster terrorizing their village. Here she meets William Ransome, the local priest, his wife Stella, and their children. Although Cora does not think much of religion, she becomes close friends with Will and his family, with surprising results.

There are so many oppositions in this novel: religion vs. science, superstition vs. reason, tradition vs. modernity, social classes rubbing up against each other in uncomfortable ways, innovations in medicine that go against people's sense of God's place in their lives or against their sense of human value. Almost everyone in the story is baffled, but out of all this friction comes a sense of growth.