Uprising places a young woman between the privileges of her birth and the people suffering under her father’s policies. Set against the unrest of England in 1381, J.E. Rizzo’s novel follows Blanche Fitzjohn as an arranged marriage, an approaching revolt, and heightened senses she cannot fully explain force her to decide where her loyalties belong.
Uprising
J.E. Rizzo
Book One of the Fitzjohn Duology
Genre: Historical Fiction with Speculative and Romantic Elements
Date Published: September 1, 2026
Publisher: Literary Wanderlust
England, 1381 AD: Blanche Fitzjohn is an outcast in her small coastal village. Not only is she the illegitimate daughter of John of Gaunt, the man responsible for her neighbors’ over-taxation, but she possesses strange abilities: hearing sound from miles away and smelling people’s emotions.
She takes solace in her studies with the local wisewoman and in her friendship with Geoff, a groom at the local manor. Until the day Henry of Lancaster, Blanche’s half-brother, brings her news of an arranged marriage to Sir Thomas Prescott, Constable of the Tower of London. Although she smells cruelty on him, Blanche agrees to marry Thomas in the hopes that her influence may help better the lives of Geoff and all England’s villeins.
But soon, the peasants’ discontent turns to revolt. Though her heart is of the people, Blanche’s nobility makes her an enemy to the rebels. To save herself and Henry from the executioner’s ax, Blanche must use every power at her disposal, even those she once considered a curse.
Blanche’s position gives the political conflict an unusually personal shape. She is connected by blood to John of Gaunt and Henry of Lancaster, yet her friendships, sympathies, and daily life bind her to the villeins burdened by noble rule. The coming revolt therefore threatens her from both directions: the ruling class can use her as a political asset, while the rebels may judge her by the family name she cannot escape.
Her heightened hearing and ability to detect emotions through scent add a speculative dimension without removing the story from its medieval setting. Those senses expose cruelty that others can conceal, but they also overwhelm Blanche and mark her as different. Combined with an arranged marriage to a man she already distrusts, they turn questions of consent, duty, and self-preservation into central parts of the historical struggle.
Uprising is well matched to readers who enjoy historical fiction shaped by class conflict, contested loyalties, and women attempting to exercise agency within rigid social systems. The 1381 setting and Blanche’s connection to both the nobility and the villeins will particularly interest those drawn to stories that examine major political events through an intimate, character-centered perspective.
The novel should also appeal to readers comfortable with speculative abilities woven into a recognizable historical world. Blanche’s sensory gifts influence how she understands danger, attraction, and deception, while her relationship with Geoff introduces a romantic conflict divided by rank as sharply as the country itself.
J.E. Rizzo is a life-long history fanatic and writer of historical fiction, and her work can be found in Vanity Fair, The Boston Globe, The Guardian, The Tudor Times, Tudor Life Magazine, Scary Mommy, and Ultrarunning Magazine. Rizzo won Manuscript Academy’s Agent Choice Award in 2024, and her article Past and Precedence: Abortion Law in the Middle Ages and Its Use to Overturn Roe v. Wade won History Inquiry’s Medieval History Writing Challenge.
By day, Rizzo works in Human Resources—a field offering more than ample opportunity to observe the follies and fancies of humankind. Before her career in HR, Rizzo worked as an opera singer, a professional baker, and a dog walker. These days, when not writing she can be found running ultramarathons through the forests and mountains of New England, knitting, reading, sewing, baking, or performing any number of (what some might call) old-lady hobbies. She also keeps busing caring for her two children and forty-seven houseplants, making her husband carry heavy things and cook her gourmet meals, and rehabilitating her rescue dog and semi-feral ginger cat.
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Blanche’s greatest danger may not be choosing the wrong side, but discovering that neither side fully accepts her. Noble blood makes her suspect among the rebels, while illegitimacy and unusual abilities leave her vulnerable within the world of privilege. Her proposed marriage turns that divided identity into a binding political decision just as England’s social order begins to fracture.
The chapter excerpt sharpens that conflict by showing what duty would cost Blanche personally. Her closeness with Geoff, her desire for her father’s approval, and her awareness that consent is still hers to give pull her in incompatible directions. With the Peasants’ Revolt approaching and the first half of the Fitzjohn Duology opening on September 1, Uprising promises a story in which private choices carry consequences far beyond one household.
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