The Stone Witch of Florence
By Anna Rasche
Park Row; hardcover, 368 pages; $30.00; available today, Tuesday, October 8th
Anna Rasche lives in Brooklyn and is a historian and hematologist who has previously worked in the jewelry collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and as a curatorial fellow at the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum.
The Stone Witches of Florence is Rasche's debut novel, and it is based on original research she conducted on the uses of gemstones in medieval medicine at the Cooper Hewitt Museum and on-site in Italy. Her deep knowledge of gemstones, and their historical significance, runs authentically through the pages of this compelling work.
Set in Florence in 1348, the story is centered on a young woman who harnesses the strange, ancient magic of gemstones to heal the sick and investigate a series of shocking crimes, while she proves that she is more physician than witch.
One overarching theme that Rasche wanted to bring to the fore is the the timeless feminist struggle for visibility and purpose and what it means to be an outsider.
The Black Plague is laying waste to Italy, Ginerva di Gasparo is summoned back to Florence after she has had nearly a decade of lonely exile. She has a gift, the ability to use the ancient practices of alchemy she learned as a young girl to heal the sick.
However, when word traveled of her unusual craft, she was called a witch and banished. Now, the same men who expelled Ginerva are begging for her to come back.
Ginerva obliges, and hopes that the city's leadership will accept her unorthodox cures in this emergency. The thing is that, when she arrives, they task her with a far different mission, as she must use her collection of jewels to track down a ruthless thief who is ransacking Florence's churches for priceless relics, leaving mysterious vials of brightly colored liquids in their place. If she succeeds, she will finally earn her recognition as a physician, and never hear about witchcraft again.
As the investigation progresses, Ginerva discovers that this is about more than just her, that she is merely a pawn in a much larger scheme than what she's been tasked with solving. The dangerous men behind this conspiracy won't think twice about killing a stone witcvh to get what they want.
In this excerpt, the reader is introduced to Ginerva's early life:
About 1330, City of Genoa
In the very old days, before even Rome was great, there were many doctors and witches in Italy who used stones and plants and odd bits of animals to make things happen that wouldn't otherwise. They might, for instance, pound pastes to banish madness, or arrange amulets on women's beds to ease their labor. They could build a charm to warn a prosperous lord when his food was poisoned, and read the future in birds' guts, folding them inside parchment packets to seal the prophecies. Powerful magi hoarded precious gems with secret words engraved upon them, and old women mended broken hearts with bundles of parsley tied up just so.
As Christianity spread, overtaking the ancient religions, the princes and priests of this new church became greedy in their power. Jealous and afraid of the old ways, they condemned any miraculous event with roots outside of Christian ritual. Those who remained artful in the ancient secrets, who remembered how to coax magic from stones and potions from plants, found it prudent to become quiet in their practices. The ones who were brash lost their livelihoods, and found themselves prodded with all sorts of unpleasant and spiky things.
It was into this fraught time that Ginerva di Gasparo was born, to parents of no great importanc , about the year 1320.
Her city of Genoa was built right up against the sea inside a large and beautiful harbor. It was filled with sand-colored buildings topped with red tile roofs, all jumbled up with one another and pressed out against concentric Ring's of stone defense walls. Every day, vessels arrived, sitting low in the water with holds full of treasure from Africa or Britain or some such place. And each year, the Genoese trade routes stretched out farther, like the fingers of an eager hand, poking their way through to Crimea, Antioch, and Tripoli. Merchants returned with gold-threaded tapestries from Flanders, blue lapis lazuli from Kabul, cotton gauze from Egypt, and perfumed woods from the forests of Ethiopia.
From an early age, Ginerva knew about the luxurious cargoes and important transactions taking place in her city, but as a daughter of poor fishing folk, her life was generally devoid of fine things. The pungent scents of fermenting fish as pitch boiled by shipbuilders permeated the district where she lived, so Ginerva's light hair and undyed wool dress always smelled of dockside industry. Her father, Gasparo, made his living fishing for the red corals that grew in sharp crags on the sea bottom. From the time she was very small, Ginerva's father would take her out onto the water to help him with his work. Instead of a net, they would drop a sort of wooden cross from their little boat and drag it across the reefs to crack the corals from their rocky bases. The slick lava-red branches were hauled into the boat and laid out to dry, and Ginerva would watch the tiny white polyps who lived in the coral pulse and writhe about as they suffocated in the air. This filled her with sorrow, because she did not like to see living things suffer. After the harvest, Ginerva's mother, Camiola, would break the dead corals apart. Eventually the pieces would be sent to nimble-fingered orphan girls who polished them into beads to be strung or rosaries, mounted in monstrances, or made into pairs of bracelets that were put on babies to keep them safe.
The corals processed by Gasparo and Camiola were pledged, at deep discount, to a merchant who built his own fortune at the port long ago and now used violence to ensure no others could follow the path he took for success. But, in defiance of the cartel, Gasparo made an arrangement with an old woman called Monna Vermilia, reserving a small portion of his coral for her each week.
To avoid attention from the merchant's agents, Gasparo sent his daughter to the old woman's dingy abode to deliver the parcels of tiny red twigs hidden inside a round of stale bread. Vermilion needed the corals because she still knew the old ways of healing and made her living from them. She said special blessings over the branches and put them on cords, then sold them cheaply to couples who could not afford polished bracelets but were still afraid for their babies. She sold them also to sailors to protect them from drowning, and shopkeepers afraid of losing their inventory."
The Trip
By Phoebe Morgan
William Morrow Paperbacks; paperback, 336 pages, $18.99; available today, Tuesday, October 8th
Phoebe Morgan is the bestselling author of The Wild Girls, and an editor who lives in London, England. She studied English at Leeds University after growing up in the Suffolk countryside.
The Trip is a gripping thriller about a group of friends who embark on the perfect vacation - or so they thought it would be. That all changed when one of them committed the perfect crime.
Saskia, Theo, Holly, and Lucas set out on a couple's trip in Thailand. When they arrive at their destination, they come upon Caleb, the man who found Holly's missing bag and returns it to her.
They soon discover that Caleb, who is charismatic and very appealing, is staying at the same hotel as they are, and it's not long before they're all friends.
However, soon after that, a series of suspicious behaviors and missing items raise red flags, and the once-alluring mysterious aura he projects is altered. As the tensions mount, secrets are revealed that can't be escaped even on vacation.
A whodunit guessing game among the friends ensues, which only adds to the intrigue of this intriguing read, with the story told in alternating voices from the four friends, giving it a complete perspective.
In this excerpt, Holly tells of being on the flight: "We're sitting right at the back of the plane, Lucas and me in one row, and Saskia and Theo behind us. I've got the window seat, which is good because Lucas is a bit of an anxious flyer whereas I like to look out. I wriggle in my seat a bit, trying to get comfy, as the air hostess talks us through the safety procedures, pointing out the emergency exits, her arms moving up and down robotically.
'Why do they bother with this?' Lucas whispers in my ear. 'If anything happens, we're basically toast.'
'Don't be silly!' I say. 'That's not true at all. Stop worrying. Nothing's going to happen, and if it does, you'll get to go on one of those fun-looking air slides.' I grin at him, then reach out and ruffle his hair. 'We'll be there in a few hours. And it'll be worth it, I promise.'
'You commencing your usual in-flight anxiety?' Theo says, his head popping up from between the seats, and Lucas looks sheepish.
'I'm fine.'
I squeeze his hand. 'Of course you are.'
Lucas and I have been together for three years now, and I know the things that bother him - flying is one of them, me leaving toothpaste trails in the sink after brushing my teeth is another. You could say one is more of a problem than the other. Though we're saving for a flat together, working toward a deposit, so soon enough the toothpaste trails might become more of an issue. I've already found our dream place online, but we can't afford it. Doesn't stop me constantly looking at the Rightmove page, though. One day, our luck might change.
'We haven't been away for ages, have we?' I say, dreamily. 'It's going to be so brilliant.'
'Cabin crew, prepare for takeoff,' comes the voice over the loudspeaker, and Lucas clutches his seat belt, as though checking it's still fastened.
'You're all good,' I tell him, and he nods, swallows. He'll be fine once we get up there; he's always like this at the start. Though it has been a long time since we went abroad - I forgot how nervous he can get.
The plane begins to move forward, and I wipe my hand across the small rounded window, watch as the gray walls of Heathrow begin to fade into the distance. There are tiny ice crystals glittering on the glass, fracturing the light. Glancing across the aisle, I see there is a man with his head bowed and his hands clasped together, his lips moving soundlessly, as though he's praying. Lucas clocks him too and I roll my eyes to reassure him. Honestly, it's a bit unnerving, but people have their own rituals, don't they? Whatever makes him feel safe.
'Bye byr, London,' I say, then settle into my seat, tip my head back against the headrest. I love this part of flying - the feeling of ascending into the air, the drop in your stomach as the plane leaves the ground. It's exhilarating. It makes you feel like anything could happen. Anything at all."
No comments:
Post a Comment