Ken Follett imagines finding a box buried in the garden of the house where he has just moved. Inside, engraved on a collar, he discovers this inscription: > this man is the property of Sir George Jamisson, year 1767.(...) if the steel collar could speak,(...) what story would it tell? From this opening, reminiscent of the discovery of buried treasure, begins a tale that aspires to be historical
Two hundred years after the events recounted in *The Pillars of the Earth*, Kingsbridge has become a prosperous town whose prospects for growth are, however, jeopardized by monastic rule, which curtails entrepreneurial freedom in favor of rigid stagnation and heavy taxation. There is, consequently, the risk of an economic and social decline. The engine of innovation and change is a woman, Caris.
