Sold for Endless Rue
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- £8.99
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- £8.99
Publisher Description
After a blighted childhood, young Laura finds peace and purpose in the home of a midwife and healer. Later, she enrolls in Salerno's famed medical school—the first in the world to admit women. Laura and her adoptive mother hope that Laura can build a bridge between women's herbal healing and the new science of medicine developing in thirteenth century Italy.
The hardest lessons are those of love; Laura falls hard for a fellow student who abandons her for a wealthy wife. Worse, her mother rejects her as "impure." Shattered, Laura devotes herself to her work, becoming a respected medico. But her heart is still bitter, and when she sees a chance for revenge, she grabs it—and takes for her own Bieta, the newborn daughter of a woman whose husband regularly raided the physician's garden for bitter herbs to satisfy his pregnant wife's cravings.
Determined to protect her adored daughter from the ravages of the world, Laura isolates the young woman in a tower. Bieta, as determined as her mother, escapes, and finds adventure—and love—on the streets of Salerno.
Bieta's betrayal of her mother's love comes at a terrible price as lives are ruined and families are torn apart. Laura's medical knowledge cannot heal her broken heart; only a great act of love can bring everyone forgiveness and peace.
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Three generations of women struggle for love and acceptance amidst the male-dominated discipline of medicine in this imaginative historical fiction based on the fairy tale "Rapunzel". Robins (The Stone War) begins in 13th century Salerno, Italy, as 11 year-old Laura narrowly escapes from her abusive captor. Taken in as an apprentice by Crescia, a benevolent healer and midwife, Laura learns the trade and later enrolls in the Scuola, a prestigious medical academy as their first female student. Being told, " greater your consequence, the harder for them to question your ability," Laura strives academically to prove her worth among her male classmates. When a romantic encounter with a classmate sours, she is left bitter and devastated as Crescia shuns her for her lack of chastity. Years later as a successful physician, Laura has an opportunity for revenge when she tends to a pregnant neighbor. Taking baby Bieta for her own, Laura is determined to shelter her from the pain and betrayal she experienced as a young woman, even as her methods of protection become increasingly extreme. Though Robins's slow-starting narrative offers an explanation for Rapunzel/Bieta's captivity, the fairy tale origins lose importance as the story develops and gathers its own momentum.
