Unputdownable.” - Jeanette Lynes, bestselling author of The Apothecary's Garden
We encounter a vivid array of women from various walks of life who struggle for survival, agency, and love, and who often risk everything to break out of society’s constraints and expectations that define them. “A gripping, textured, meticulously researched tale of women’s lives in the watery world of early sixteenth-century Venice, a place of beauty but also rigid social stratification. Written with colourful conversation and finely researched details of a city threatened by war and floods (even then), the novel shows the bravery of women who dared to fight for the right to free their hearts and their minds.” - Lisa Rochon, bestselling author of Tuscan Daughter “Gina Buonaguro has cracked open the secret lives of nuns living behind stone walls in glorious, oppressive sixteenth-century Venice. She finds she must trust her own heart to make the impossible decisions that may save or ruin them all. But secrets and scandals breach the convent walls, and Justina learns there may be even worse fates for her than the veil, if La Diamante makes good on her threats.ĭesperate to protect herself and the ones she loves, Justina turns to Luca for help.
Justina is shocked to discover how the women of the convent find their own freedom in what seems to her like a prison. It’s well known that he is in debt to both his trading partners and the most infamous courtesan in the city, La Diamante, and the pressure is closing in.Īfter arriving at the convent, Justina takes solace in her aunt Livia, one of the nuns, and in the growing knowledge that all is not strictly devout at San Zaccaria. Lord Soranzo is not acting only to protect his family. Her hopes are dashed when her father decides her younger sister, Rosa, will marry in a strategic alliance and Justina will be sent to the San Zaccaria convent, in the tradition of aristocratic daughters. Amid this turmoil, noblewoman Justina Soranzo, just sixteen, hopes to make a rare love marriage with her sweetheart, Luca Cicogna. The displeasure of Pope Julius II is a continuing threat to the republic, as is the barely contained fighting in the countryside. In sixteenth-century Venice, one young noblewoman dares to resist the choices made for her
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