Healey, Judith Koll

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HEALEY, Judith Koll

PERSONAL:

Daughter of Leo (an executive) and Beatrice (a medical technician) Koll; married Michael Healey (an attorney), 1964; children: Sean, Paul, Colin, Michael. Education: University of Minnesota, B.A. (English); St. Mary's University, M.A. (human development), 1995.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Minneapolis, MN. Agent—c/o Author Mail, HarperCollins Publishers, 10 East 53rd St., 7th Fl., New York, NY 10022. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Consultant, workshop leader, teacher, and lecturer. Taught grassroots lobbying for Joint Religious Legislative Coalition, MN, 1970s; worked for General Mills Foundation, 1980s; vice president of Northwest Area Foundation and St. Paul Foundation; owner, JKH Executive Consulting; manager, Weyerhaeuser Family Foundation and Laura Jane Musser Fund. Consultant to Counsel on Foundations, Washington, DC.

WRITINGS:

The Canterbury Papers (novel), William Morrow (New York, NY), 2004.

Also author of short fiction and poetry.

SIDELIGHTS:

Judith Koll Healey spent much of her life working with foundations before beginning her own firm, which assists families with their philanthropic efforts. Her first novel, The Canterbury Papers, was begun while she vacationed with her husband in France. Healey had acquired a book about Eleanor of Aquitaine and had also read historical accounts that suggested that Alais Capet, the daughter of Louis VI of France and his second wife, a Spanish princess, had a child by Henry II of England, second husband of Louis VI's first wife, Eleanor. If there had been such a child, Western history would have been very different.

Alais grew up at the court of Eleanor of Aquitaine, but she eventually returned to her brother's court in France. On her Web site, Healey explained that she "began to muse on the topic of Alais, herself, wondering if she was the delicate sprite shown in the film Lion in Winter or whether, perhaps, she was made of sterner stuff. I had an idea of women in the Middle Ages as pawns, but there have been certain models of assertiveness, strength, and talent in a number of women of that time, including Eleanor herself." Healey imagined what it would have been like to be Alais, from her childhood through her adulthood, and in her novel speculates on a discovery that revolves around the birth of a love child.

Healey's story begins in 1200, with Alais a middle-aged woman living in Paris at her brother's court. For her unhappiness she blames Eleanor, who had arranged her marriage to Richard the Lionhearted but who then selected a different young woman to marry him. A letter arrives from Eleanor, in which she proposes an exchange. If Alais will retrieve letters Eleanor had long ago written to Thomas Becket, the murdered Archbishop of Canterbury that are hidden in Canterbury Cathedral in England, she will tell Alais about her child who she was told died shortly after birth. Alais accepts the challenge, but upon arriving in England, she encounters a number of obstacles, including the Knights Templar, a group of Benedictine scholars, and Eleanor's son, King John, who will do whatever it takes to keep his right to the crown secure.

Of The Canterbury Papers, Booklist critic Margaret Flanagan wrote that Healey "brings medieval history to life in magnificent fashion as she adds a new twist to an old legend." A Publishers Weekly contributor wrote that "this engaging medieval suspense debut is alternately playful and sober in its explanation of the power maneuvers and backstabbing of the royal families of England and France."