SACRED HEARTS by Sarah Dunant Book Trailer

SACRED HEARTS is a new novel from bestselling author Sarah Dunant. The year is 1570, and in the convent of Santa Caterina in the Italian city of Ferrara noble women find space to pursue their lives under Gods protection. But any community, however smoothly run, suffers tremors when it takes in someone by force. And the arrival of Santa Caterinas new novice sets in motion a chain of events that will shake the convent to its core.

The sixteen-year-old daughter of a noble family from Milan, Serafina is willful, emotional, sharp, and defiantyoung 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 girls cell to sedate her.

Thus begins a complex relationship of trust and betrayal between the young rebel and the clever, scholarly nun, who is old enough to be Serafinas mother. As Serafina rails against her incarceration, others are drawn into the drama: the ancient, mysterious Suora Magdalenawith her history of visions and ecstasieslocked 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 abbesss 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.

Visit Sarah Dunant's website at www.SarahDunant.com

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