cover image DANTE'S DAUGHTER

DANTE'S DAUGHTER

, . . Front Street, $16.95 (304pp) ISBN 978-1-886910-97-3

As in her The Shakeress, Heuston produces a lovingly detailed historical novel, rich in its setting and ambitious in its scope, if less than fully successful as fiction. Here the author imagines the life of Dante Alighieri's daughter, Antonia, about whom little is known except that she eventually became a Dominican nun. Antonia, the narrator, is five when civil war in her native Florence abruptly scatters her family and she is sent to stay with the artist Duccio in Siena (Heuston identifies but only loosely explains the confusing politics of 14th-century Florence). After developing her own interest in art, Bice, as she is nicknamed, now 11, accepts an invitation from her father (now exiled from Florence) to travel with him to Paris. The author enjoys alluding to characters from Dante's later works—and even if not all of her appropriations are entirely accurate (as an afterword concedes) perhaps her enthusiasm may lay a foundation for the audience's eventual desire to read Dante on their own. Bice's voice can be stilted, especially in the early sections, and characters develop in predictable ways, but for the most part Heuston offers solid entertainment for fans of historical fiction. Ages 12-up. (Nov.)