SACRED HEARTS
1567 – in Santa Catarina, a convent in Ferrara
that is home to 120 women (and one very old father confessor) great change is coming.
For Suora Zuana, a doctor’s daughter, the enclosed life is well worth living.
She runs her herb garden and dispensary, treating all manner of complaints
from the wounds of the flagellant nuns to the piles and bad breath of the local
bishop. Then there is the devout Suora Umiliana, consumed by the need for
transcendence, who feels the convent should be stricter and more Godly;
the mysterious, saintly Suora Magdalena, incarcerated within the convent,
and Suora Chiara, the abbess, daughter of a powerful family who has
been in the convent since she was six years old, a consummate politician
who now controls their little community.
Then Serafina, a sixteen year old torn from a forbidden love affair, makes her
howling forced entry into the convent and is determined to escape at any
cost. Her arrival throws up a challenge to all the womens’ lives. Like a touch
paper, she starts a fire that will engulf the whole convent.
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