The path of true love never runs straight.

Alonso and Luisa love each other. However, there are a few obstacles to their happiness: the husband she was forced to marry; her uncle, the Regent of Spain; and Alonso's heritage as a Jew. Mix in the meddlesome Natale, whose loyalty is always to the highest bidder, and you have a story of a courageous couple determined to be happy together, despite the cards being stacked against them.

Using the tumultuous period of Spain immediately following the deaths of Ferdinand and Isabella as her canvas, Erika Rummel paints a portrait of the era where cardinals hold all the power and Jews are forcibly converted to Christianity yet still are not accepted in society, and spies are around every corner in every palace.

About the author: Erika Rummel has taught history at the University of Toronto and Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo. She divides her time between Toronto and Los Angeles and has lived in villages in Argentina, Romania, and Bulgaria.

She is the author of more than a dozen books on social history and has written five novels: Playing Naomi, Head Games, The Inquisitor's Niece, The Painting on Auerperg's Wall, and The Effects of Isolation on the Brain, an excerpt of which was awarded the Random House Creative Writing Award in 2011.

She is the translator of the correspondence between Alfred Nobel and his Viennese mistress. Three Women and Alfred Nobel, a novel based on these letters, was released in September 2018.