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Random House
July 2009
On Sale: July 14, 2009
432 pages
ISBN: 1400063825
EAN: 9781400063826
Hardcover
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Fiction
The year is 1570, and in the convent of Santa Caterina, in
the Italian city of Ferrara, noblewomen find space to
pursue their lives under God’s protection. But any
community, however smoothly run, suffers tremors when it
takes in someone by force. And the arrival of Santa
Caterina’s new novice sets in motion a chain of events that
will shake the convent to its core. Ripped by her family from an illicit love affair, sixteen-
year-old Serafina is willful, emotional, sharp, and defiant–
young enough to have a life to look forward to and old
enough to know when that life is being cut short. Her first
night inside the walls is spent in an incandescent rage so
violent that the dispensary mistress, Suora Zuana, is
dispatched to the girl’s cell to sedate her. Thus begins a
complex relationship of trust and betrayal between the
young rebel and the clever, scholarly nun, for whom the
girl becomes the daughter she will never have. As Serafina rails against her incarceration, others are
drawn into the drama: the ancient, mysterious Suora
Magdalena–with her history of visions and ecstasies–locked
in her cell; the ferociously devout novice mistress Suora
Umiliana, who comes to see in the postulant a way to extend
her influence; and, watching it all, the abbess, Madonna
Chiara, a woman as fluent in politics as she is in prayer.
As disorder and rebellion mount, it is the abbess’s job to
keep the convent stable while, outside its walls, the
dictates of the Counter-Reformation begin to purge the
Catholic Church and impose on the nunneries a regime of
terrible oppression. Sarah Dunant, the bestselling author of The Birth of Venus
and In the Company of the Courtesan, brings this intricate
Renaissance world compellingly to life. Amid Sacred Hearts
is a rich, engrossing, multifaceted love story,
encompassing the passions of the flesh, the exultation of
the spirit, and the deep, enduring power of friendship.
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