Set amid the twisting streets and sunlit piazzas of medieval Italy, the Towers of Tuscany tells the story of a woman who dares to follow her own path in the all-male domain of the painter’s workshop. Sofia Barducci is born into a world where a woman is only as good as the man who cares for her, but she still claims the right to make her own mistakes. Her first mistake is convincing her father to let her marry Giorgio Carelli, a wealthy saffron merchant in San Gimignano, the Tuscan city of towers.
Trained in secret by her father to create the beautifully-crafted panels and altarpieces acclaimed today as masterpieces of late medieval art, Sofia’s desire for freedom from her father’s workshop leads her to betray her passion and sink into a life of loveless drudgery with a husband who comes to despise her when she does not produce a son.
In an attack motivated by vendetta, Sofia’s father is crushed by his own fresco, compelling Sofia to act or risk the death of her soul. The choice she makes takes her on a journey from misery to the heights of passion-both as a painter and as a woman. Sofia escapes to Siena where, disguised as a boy, she paints again. When her work attracts the notice of a nobleman who discovers the woman under the dirty smock, Sofia is faced with a choice that nearly destroys her.
The Towers of Tuscany unites a strong heroine with meticulously researched settings and compelling characters drawn from the rich tapestry of medieval Italy during one of Europe’s most turbulent centuries. The stylishly written plot is packed with enough twists and turns to keep readers up long past their bedtimes.
Praise for The Towers of Tuscany:
“. . .a beautifully crafted masterpiece of historical fiction that takes the reader full circle as they turn through the pages. . . . 6 out of 5 stars.” – David Rieckmann
“If you love historical novels, if you love strong female characters who are conflicted and passionate and fight for what they love, if you love literary novels that inform you but aren’t out to be too “teachy”–while still teaching you about a fascinating time in Italian art, then this book is for you.” – Cathleen With, award-winning author of “Having Faith in the Polar Girl’s Prison”
“If you liked The Girl with the Pearl Earring [by Tracy Chevalier], you will love this book!” – Pam Conrad
“This novel has it all – intrigue, love, suspense and more and I highly recommend it as a good read.” – Nancy McLachlan
“This is a great page turner!” – Pat Kostuk
“I’m amazed at [Carol’s] ability to give us details of art and society in 14th century Siena while making a plot that carries us along. Perfectly balanced.” – Adam Morton
Excerpt:
The occupation known as painting calls for imagination, and skill of hand . . . presenting to plain sight what does not actually exist.
Cennino d’Andrea Cennini, Il Libro dell’Arte,
Chapter I: The First Chapter of the First Section of This Book
Sofia did not blame her father for allowing her to marry Giorgio, but not a day went by when she did not blame herself.
Every night as Giorgio grunted and thrust, she imagined wrapping her hands around his thick neck and squeezing. His dull eyes would widen in the moonlight, then bulge as she dug her thumbs into the swell of his throat and smiled when his lips turned a pale, pure blue.
But most of the time, Sofia tried not to think about him at all.
A shaft of sunlight fell across the small panel of the Nativity she was painting. Sofia snuffed out the candle and paused a moment to watch a curl of smoke spiral to the wooden rafters. She wanted to be the smoke—light enough to escape through the tower window and out into the fields, away from her husband, away from San Gimignano, away from her household with its incessant demands, away to paint every day in peace. But such thoughts were fancy, and hadn’t her father scolded her often enough for preferring fancy over fact?
Sighing, she loaded one of her smallest miniver brushes with terre-verte. Giorgio was out hunting, which meant she had until the next bells to paint. Using tiny, precise strokes, she added touches of the green-tinged pigment under the Virgin’s chin and down her neck to suggest a shadow. Delicately, between two fingers, the Holy Mother lifted the fold of a sheet. Sofia added more white lead to the edge of the sheet to give it an illusion of movement, catching Mary at the moment she leaned forward to keep her child warm. Sofia wondered if she would ever lean over her own child, hear its cries, feel her heart swell with the love Caterina was always rattling on about.
She hoped not.
The bells for Nones caught her by surprise, as they always did. The only part of her day, her week, worth living was already over. She pushed back from the table and rose to her feet. Massaging with one hand a knot in her shoulder, she stepped to the narrow window. Between the two closest towers, the countryside beyond the town was just visible as a slit of green and gold. The commune of San Gimignano fairly bristled with towers—more than seventy the last time Sofia counted. Day after day, the pounding and clanging of endless construction filled the air, along with dust so thick that on windless afternoons citizens squinted across the Piazza della Cisterna.
“Wife!”
Sofia gasped. Giorgio sounded as if he were halfway up the first set of ladders. She looked at her hands. A daub of ochre streaked one finger, a parody of the late afternoon sunlight flooding the tower room. If her husband made it up the ladders, he would destroy the pigments and brushes, destroy the painting even. No! He would never be so stupid. The small panel of the Nativity belonged to her father. Even Giorgio knew enough about the painter’s trade to respect the rights of a patron. And he would never dare anger her father.
But he could make sure she never painted again.
Sofia picked up a corner of her smock and rubbed at her stained finger. The paint was still wet enough to smear. She spat, rubbed, spat again until finally the yellow lifted. Her hands would pass inspection if Giorgio didn’t look too closely. Fortunately, he rarely looked closely at anything.
“What the devil are you doing up there?” Giorgio was barely able to gasp out the words. For the moment, she was safe. He didn’t sound capable of making it to the second level, never mind the third. Giorgio was getting heavier by the day. One night he would fall to sleep on top of her. And then what? If she couldn’t rouse Paulina from her palette at the foot of the bed, she would perish.
“Forgive me, husband!” she called as she ripped off her smock and smoothed her hair. God willing, she didn’t have any paint on her face. She took a last look at the painting. It was good—maybe even her best work. Would her father agree? He was a harsh critic.
She stepped to the opening in the floor, placed one foot on the first rung, then began to descend, reaching the final rung of the middle set of ladders just as Giorgio was squeezing through the opening in the floor to flop, panting and sweating, onto the landing. She saw at once that he had not spent his day hunting boar or anything else save a happy turn of the dice. Was that blood on his jaw? Had he been fighting again? How many florins had he gambled away with the sun not even close to the horizon?
“You must ask your father to help us,” he said as he rose to his feet, still gulping for breath.
“I wasn’t aware we needed help.”
Giorgio balled his fists and moved closer. She smelled stale wine and put one hand to her nose. A slight whiff of egg tempera still lingered on her skin. Relief was making her bold. If Giorgio had not yet asked what she’d been doing at the top of the tower, he was unlikely to. He hadn’t the wit to concentrate on more than one thing at a time—which was why his saffron exporting business was falling into ruin. They would be lucky to keep the house with its convenient tower past her twenty-first birthday.
About Carol Cram:
Carol M. Cram has enjoyed a great career as an educator, teaching at Capilano University in North Vancouver for over twenty years and authoring forty-plus bestselling textbooks on business communications and software applications. She holds an MA in Drama from the University of Toronto and an MBA from Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, Scotland. Carol is currently focusing as much of her attention as she can spare between walks in the woods on writing historical novels with an arts twist.
She and her husband, painter Gregg Simpson, share a life on beautiful Bowen Island near Vancouver, Canada. Visit her at www.carolcram.com.
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