The Candlemaker's Woman

By: Marj Charlier

Narrated by: Hazel Moon

Based on true events, a traumatic story of mass migration as relevant today as it has been since humans walked out of Africa.

Desperately fleeing the Huns in old Germania, the Suevi tribe sells Melia, a girl on the cusp of womanhood, into slavery, hoping to bribe its way into Gaul. Caught in the middle of the chaotic diaspora, Melia survives the cruelty of her owner, the candlemaker, and excels at making beautiful tapers and votives. But when the Suevi and thousands more barbarians storm across the frozen Rhine at midnight, New Years Eve, AD406, Gaul is transformed overnight, and Melia’s life is ripped apart again.

Reunited with her family in the calamitous invasion, she is called upon to use her skills and cunning to save them from warring Franks. But will she ever recover the love of her life, the father of her son? Her story imagines how one family, forced from their home by violence and hunger, endures one of the most disruptive and transformative events in history.

©2024 Marj Charlier (P)2025 Marj Charlier

Is there happiness after slavery?

The narrator really brought the characters to life in a story of one family set in a time period few people know anything about. I could feel the cold winds blowing, the gnawing hunger pains, and the brutality of the candlemaker.
You can tell the author spent a very long time researching the time period.