I was very sad to learn this morning of the death of Judith Merkle Riley from ovarian cancer. When her A Vision of Light, about an unusual medieval mystic in the tradition of Margery Kempe, came out in 1989, it was a groundbreaking work, fitting an imagined character into a convincing and well-realized medieval setting. The last of her books I read was The Oracle Glass, about poisoners and witchcraft in seventeenth-century France. Like her first book its main charm was the compelling character of her female lead.
Here is her obituary in the Los Angeles Times. Sixty-eight is much too young.