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Published May 2017
464 pages
Genre: Historical Fiction
Publication Information
Equal parts transporting love story, meticulously researched historical fiction, and compelling time-travel narrative - think The Girl with a Pearl Earring meets Outlander - debut author Melodie Winawer takes readers deep into medieval Italy, where the past and present blur and a twenty-first century woman will discover a plot to destroy Siena.
Accomplished neurosurgeon Beatrice Trovato knows that her deep empathy for her patients is starting to impede her work. So when her beloved brother passes away, she welcomes the unexpected trip to the Tuscan city of Siena to resolve his estate, even as she wrestles with grief. But as she delves deeper into her brother's affairs, she discovers intrigue she never imagined - a 700-year-old conspiracy to decimate the city.
After uncovering the journal and paintings of Gabriele Accorsi, the fourteenth-century artist at the heart of the plot, Beatrice finds a startling image of her own face and is suddenly transported to the year 1347. She awakens in a Siena unfamiliar to her, one that will soon be hit by the Plague.
Yet when Beatrice meets Accorsi, something unexpected happens: she falls in love - not only with Gabriele, but also with the beauty and cadence of medieval life. As the Plague and the ruthless hands behind its trajectory threaten not only her survival but also Siena's very existence, Beatrice must decide in which century she belongs.
The Scribe of Siena is the captivating story of a brilliant woman's passionate affair with a time and a place that captures her in an impossibly romantic and dangerous trap - testing the strength of fate and the bonds of love.
"Starred Review. Will remind historical fiction readers of Diana Gabaldon's Outlander and Tracy Chevalier's The Girl with the Pearl Earring…Lovers of meticulously researched historical fiction and time-travel narratives will be swept away by the spell of medieval Siena." - Library Journal
"Starred Review. This is a marvelous work of research and invention." - Publishers Weekly
"Despite an overreliance on surprisingly well-preserved documents, clues to the central mystery wind carefully through both time lines as Beatrice gradually unravels a Florentine conspiracy and, always cognizant of what the future holds, takes risks to save those she loves." - Booklist
"The realities of day-to-day existence in 1340s Europe are so viscerally represented that readers will readily accept the fanciful premise." - Kirkus
"The Scribe of Siena is one part historical mystery and one part love story with a captivating dose of art mixed in for good measure. If that weren't enough, it all comes together in that most evocative of settings: Siena, Italy. Winawer's smart debut is a joy to read! - Meg Waite Clayton, New York Times bestselling author of The Wednesday Sisters and The Race for Paris
This information about The Scribe of Siena was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Melodie Winawer is a physician-scientist and Associate Professor of Neurology at Columbia University. A graduate of Yale University, the University of Pennsylvania, and Columbia University with degrees in biological psychology, medicine, and epidemiology, she has published forty-seven nonfiction articles and book chapters. She is fluent in Spanish and French, literate in Latin, and has a passable knowledge of Italian. Dr. Winawer lives with her spouse and their three young children in Brooklyn, New York. The Scribe of Siena is her first novel.
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