In lush, glowing prose, Louise Hawes’s historical novel draws readers into the life and art of sixteenth-century Bologna with a compelling account of Lavinia Fontana, arguably the most famous female painter of the Italian Renaissance. Here readers will find a coming-of-age story filled with quest, complication, and catastrophe as well as miracles and hope. Although the novel is set four hundred years ago, the hard choices it involves speak to all times, all places, and are sure to tap into readers’ own conflicts between head and heart, real life and dreams.