ABOUT Sacred Hearts

From Sarah Dunant, acclaimed author of The Birth of Venus and In the Company of the Courtesan, comes an engrossing new novel set in a convent in Renaissance Italy where a defiant sixeteen-year-old girl has just been confined against her will--for life.  Santa Caterina's new novice sets in motion a chain of events that will shake the convent to its core.

Serafina, a willful, emotional & furious girl, has just been ripped from her proposed marriage and sent by her noble family to Santa Caterina. During her first night inside, such is her violent, incandescent rage that the dispensary mistress, Suora Zuana, is sent to her cell to calm her with a draft of herbs. Thus begins a complex relationship of trust and betrayal. And while outside the convent walls the forces of the Counter-Reformation push for ever more repressive changes, Serafina's rebellious spirit challenges not only Zuana but many other nuns who have made peace with the isolated life.

A rich, captivating, multifaceted love story, Sacred Hearts is a novel about power, creativity, passion -- both secular and spiritual -- and the indomitable spirit of women in an age when religious, political, and social forces were all stacked against them.

"Sarah Dunant's latest novel, achieves the remarkable. Ecstasy, jealousy, betrayal, revenge, adolescent rebellion, and romance swirl like trails of incense behind the impenetrable walls of the Italian convent, Santa Caterina." Read More

Sarah Dunant's Novel "Sacred Hearts" Has Been Shortlisted For the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction

TOUR DATES / RECENT NEWS