Sign-In
Cart
Brother Maria
Paperback
RomanceHistorical FictionLiterary Fiction
ISBN13: 9781421835419
Publisher: Viz Llc
Published: Sep 1 2023
Pages: 852
Weight: 2.70
Height: 1.89 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
1347. Late September. Messina, Sicily. Twelve Genoese galleys arrive unannounced, and drop anchor in its bay.
A few sailors struggle ashore, bearing a cargo on their backs; a terrible cargo that the world had never known before; a cargo of 'death' so virulent nothing could withstand or allay it: not fortress walls, not the swords and arrows of armies; not charms, herbs, or desperate flight; not the relics of Saints; not the prayers of the devout.
Thus begins the greatest pandemic in recorded history, one of apocalyptic, Biblical proportions that men would believe was God's judgment of their iniquities; leaving nearly half of Europe dead in the wake of its wrathful scourge.
Brother Ludovico has researched and painted a graphic, lurid picture of the 'Black Death', and the Great Famines that preceded it, as they swept through 14th century Italy. He has painted it with the rhyming descriptions of two men with antithetical natures: one, a learned theologian, an eminent abbot and scholar; the other, a friend of the abbot's youth, an apostate who is a lover of wine, taverns, and the arms of women. Both men find themselves faced with the harsh immediacy of death, and both strive to find meaning in the gruesome havoc with which God is ending Man's world.
A story of the soul, told with the voice of the soul, a poignant poetry that tells the existential dilemma in each of us.....a story of
the battles of flesh with spirit, belief with its abandon, the fragility
of life with the iron certainty of death.....the myths of love with our first and final, utter aloneness.
When asked about 'Brother Maria':
A kind of poetic reliquary of Man's Past; a kind of allegory of the plagues loosed on his Present; a kind of hope, perhaps the only hope for his Future.
Also from
Ludovico, Brother
Also in
Historical Fiction
James Fenimore Cooper: The Leatherstocking Tales Vol. 1 (Loa #26): The Pioneers / The Last of the Mohicans / The Prairie
Cooper, James Fenimore
Hardcover
Anniversaries, Volume 2: From a Year in the Life of Gesine Cresspahl, April 1968-August 1968
Johnson, Uwe
Paperback
The Pirate Queen: A Novel from the New York Times Bestselling Author of the Frozen River
Lawhon, Ariel
Hardcover
The Moonlight Runner: A Gripping Historical Novel of Survival, Bravery, and Romance
Robards, Karen
Hardcover
The Amalfi Curse: A Bewitching Tale of Sunken Treasure, Forbidden Love, and Ancient Magic on the Amalfi Coast
Penner, Sarah
Paperback
The Pirate Queen: A Novel from the New York Times Bestselling Author of the Frozen River (Large Print Edition)
Lawhon, Ariel
Paperback
A Pair of Aces: Reese's Book Club (Large Print Edition)
Murray, Victoria Christopher
Benedict, Marie
Paperback
Murder on the Orient Express: A Hercule Poirot Mystery: The Official Authorized Edition
Christie, Agatha
Paperback