Set in 1723 in Siena this book was beautifully written. The
setting was amazing, the history and legends behind the
city of Siena could not have been depicted better by any
other author. Fiorato simply amazed me and kept the pages
flowing with her writing. I fell in love with a duchess I
did not know, a horseman, and a woman used for her gender
mercilessly by her family. I fell in love with a Siena that
virtually leapt off the pages and into my dreams.
Siena is a city that has lived through its horses and the
most fantastic race of all, the Palio. Families across the
city gather together their horses to be chosen for the
race. They gather their men to be the elite riders of the
Palio. The contrada of Siena have always bet, won, lost,
and died by the hand of fate. Yet, this year is to be
determined by a group of nine. The nine members each are
representing their own contrada who plan to overthrow the
race, the city, and most importantly the Duchess. Two women
from opposite specters in the city find that their lives
have been irreversibly woven together by destiny.
The Duchess Violante Beatrix de'Medici has led her city
for years. Forced from her grief by a city in need of a
leader, Violante has never looked back nor shied away from
her domain. Conspiracy reaches her ears and Violante knows
that she must rally allies to defend her city from corrupt
men and to keep her haven safe. Finding the strangest
allies in the lower classes of the city, Violante has found
a messenger boy known as Zebra, a horseman, Riccardo whom
fate has brought to her breast, and a beautiful lady, Pia
to whom fate has not been kind. Gathering her little army
about her, Violante knows that alone they may never win the
battle that consumes Siena.
On her nineteenth birthday Pia was given a pendent of a
dead queen, a dead husband, and a new husband she wished
was dead. What she was not given was the one man she could
only dream of, the one man she had seen brave the Palio
with all the dignity, courage, and beauty Pia had never
seen. Cast into a new contrada, Pia finds herself in the
midst of a violence that has consumed every member of her
new household. One husband's death led to the beating death
of another man and a marriage to something scarier than Pia
has ever known. Caught in a conspiracy by her new family,
Pia knows that she may hold all the keys to locking the
doors of Siena from certain disaster. Playing a part in
unraveling the drama about to engulf them just may result
in her death, but not aiding Riccardo, the man she loves,
is not an option.
Violante was a very strong character and woman to whom I
could only greatly admire. Through all her hardships and
misfortunes the Duchess kept her promises and aided those
around her with a grandeur and style I have not felt in a
long time. Throughout the book Pia and her life are
compared to legendary woman such as Dante's Pia and the
Lady Guinevere. This comparison was very appropriate and
eerily accurate. Pia, as a character, was the woman that
everyone felt sorry for. While I felt that her trials were
enough to drive anyone insane, I marveled at her strength
time and again as she overcame diversity.
Amid the intrigue and danger of 18th-century Italy, a young
woman becomes embroiled in romance and treachery with a
rider in the Palio, the breathtaking horse race set in Siena....
It’s 1729, and the Palio, a white-knuckle horse race, is
soon to be held in the heart of the peerless Tuscan city of
Siena. But the beauty and pageantry masks the deadly rivalry
that exists among the city’s districts.
Each ward, represented by an animal symbol, puts forth a
rider to claim the winner’s banner, but the contest turns
citizens into tribes and men into beasts—and beautiful,
headstrong, young Pia Tolomei is in love with a rider of an
opposing ward, an outsider who threatens the shaky balance
of intrigue and influence that rules the land.
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