Lucy Pick is an historian of the thought and culture of medieval Spain and has published on Christian, Muslim, and Jewish relations and the intersection of gender, religion, and royal power. She taught for over twenty years at the Divinity School of the University of Chicago. Her previous novel, Pilgrimage (Cuidono Press, 2014), set in medieval Flanders and Spain, explores friendship, betrayal, miracles, healing, and redemption on the road to Santiago de Compostela. Intersecting with Pilgrimage in a key moment, The Queen's Companion offers not a sequel but a parallel exploration of the lives of women in the Middle Ages.