A Fool and His Money

A pot of gold is found in a drain in a town in southwestern France during the Hundred Years War. Does the money belong to the man who claims it, or to his befuddled father-in-law? The case of the missing coins allows Ann Wroe to investigate in detail, and through particular people, what life was like in a fourteenth-century community that was physically partitioned (as so many are today) between rival political factions. The people in her story must deal with everyday problems of competence and conscience, and they do so humorously and poignantly against a background of mutual prejudice, threatening authorities, and war.