1537. As the year to end all years rolls to a close, King Henry VIII vents his continuing fury at the pope. The Holy Roman Church reels beneath the reformation and as the vast English abbeys crumble the royal coffers begin to fill.
The people of the north, torn between loyalty to God and allegiance to their anointed king, embark upon a pilgrimage to guide their errant monarch back to grace.
But Henry is unyielding and sends an army north to quell the rebel uprising. In Yorkshire, Katheryn Lady Latimer and her step-children, Margaret and John, are held under siege at Snape Castle …
The events at Snape set Katheryn on a path that will lead from the deprivations of a castle under siege to the perils of the royal Tudor court.

Katheryn Parr has for many years been depicted by historians and novelists alike as a staid, rather dull woman. Her role little more than a nursemaid to a succession of elderly spouses, but she was much more than this.
The novel, Intractable Heart, is told via four narrators, Katheryn’s step daughter, Margaret Neville; Katheryn herself; her fourth husband Thomas Seymour; and her step-daughter Elizabeth, later to become Queen Elizabeth I.
Katheryn Parr emerges as an intelligent, practical woman; a woman who sets aside her love for Thomas Seymour to do her duty and marry the aging king.
Katheryn becomes Henry VIII’s partner in all things, acting as Regent for England during the French war, embracing and guiding Henry’s three motherless children, and providing a strong supporting voice for religious reform.
It is not until the king’s death, when she is finally free to follow the desires of her heart that her life descends into chaos … and wretchedness.