She died once already. This time, she remembers everything.
January 1536. Catherine of Aragon dies alone in a freezing cell, poisoned on the order of the husband who tore England away from Rome, branded their daughter Mary I a bastard, and moved his cast-off queen from one cold house to a colder one until her heart gave out.
Then she opens her eyes. It is 1527. Nine years have been handed back to her, and she carries the memory of every step that led to her grave. This time she will not be patient.
Henry is unraveling. His grief for the sons he could not keep has curdled into something the whole court mistakes for policy, and only Catherine sees it for what it is: a king who has decided the simplest way to stop being a man God refused is to become God himself. The law will not save her. She already tried the law, and it killed her.
So she does the one thing history swears she never would. Across a crowded sewing circle she reaches for the woman she is supposed to hate most in all the world, and Anne Boleyn reaches back.
What the two of them build over the next nine years, in whispers and threads and messages no man thinks to read, is treason. It is also the only thing that can stop a mad king before he breaks the realm a second time.
Everyone knows how this story ends.
They're wrong.
Divorced, Not Dead (This Time) reimagines the most famous marriage in English history from the inside out, turning the rivalry everyone thinks they know into the alliance no one saw coming. For readers who love a Tudor court rendered in candlelight and dread, and a "what if" that never once cheats on the history.
About the Author
Victoria Gail Hawkins has been fascinated by the Tudor court since discovering it in high school history class in the late '90s. She lives in Saint Augustine, Florida, the oldest city in the United States, founded in 1565 during the reign of Elizabeth I, Anne Boleyn's daughter, with her family and two cats. Divorced, Not Dead (This Time) is her debut novel.