Eifelheim

Eifelheim is a science fiction novel written as historical fiction, following two parallel stories:

• In the present day, a historian is trying to figure out why a village wiped out in the Black Death was never resettled, while a physicist tries to work out a new cosmological theory.
• In 1348, the pastor of Oberhochwald unexpectedly makes first contact with shipwrecked aliens, who spend the next year stranded on Earth near the village.

The present-day story is interesting, but hard to follow just because the viewpoint characters are very…self-absorbed.

Fortunately, most of the book focuses on the middle ages and the story of how a tiny German village encounters and eventually learns to live with the stranded aliens. It paints a detailed picture of life in the 1300s and how their strange visitors disrupt it, and it’s fascinating to look at how someone highly-educated in science and philosophy, but with a medieval European mindset, might see concepts like space travel, electricity, or even evolution. How do you explain coming from another planet in another star system to someone who believes that the Sun moves around the Earth, the stars are all the same distance away, and the “world” encompasses all of the above?

hyperborea.org/reviews/books/eifelheim/

Wonderful science fiction book on an alien ship crashing by remote German village on the eve of its devastation by the Black Death. The village priest, an intellectual who had to hide in the area after taking part in peasants' rebellion, understood that the aliens are thinking creatures in distress. Thus he managed to convince the villagers and the lord of the manor to assist them. He also managed to convince the aliens to accept his ideas of charity. Later, while some of the aliens left, others remained to assist during the Black Death.
Another part of the story is a contemporary couple - a physicist and a historian. The historian researches the village in question and the odd stories told about it in the area. The notion that the aliens were in the area was raised when his physicist partner accidentally noted the similarity between a medieval sketch and her own machinery.
Overall, a slow going story about the excitement of doing research and about the humanity of there who managed to overcome their fears of strangers and to collaborate in survival.