A new Italian family saga.

A highly entertaining historical novel, a perfect mix of fantasy and reality, which follows the story of three generations, in particular that of three women, products of their land and time, but also free and nonconformist, strong and romantic, capable of pursuing their dreams and fulfilling their destiny.

German sample available

Anno Domini 1657. Elisabetta Calabri of Montebello, seventeen, lives among the Appenine forests between Tuscany and Romagna and dreams of a courtly life in Florence. The Marquess Giangiacomo, her father, is suspected of heresy through being a follower of Galileo. One July morning a horseman rides into Villa Calabri: Filippo Salimbeni, a noble Florentine physician on his way to Bologna on behalf of the Grand Duke of Tuscany. At dinner, Filippo meets Betta: it’s love at first sight and Betta can finally make her dream of moving to Florence come true. Only the Grand Duchy’s capital is not exactly how she had imagined. The freedom she had enjoyed soon becomes a distant memory in the bigoted atmosphere of the Salimbeni household and in the stale air of a court and city in full decadence, and with an increasingly distant husband absorbed in his ambition as a physician. Her aunt, a nun, is always on her side, and to help her, sends an old – and, for a nun, unexpected – acquaintance: Ludovico Manobruna, a courtier and libertine, thanks to whom Elisabetta becomes known and valued in the city, so she can picture a radiant future for herself and the son she is about to give birth to and who fills her and Filippo with joy. But, in the “iron century”, prejudice and stifling convention become intertwined with individuals’ destinies, endangering their happiness and very lives…