On the eve of the Jewish expulsion from Spain, Amalia Riba stands at a crossroads. In a country violently divided by religion, she must either convert to Christianity and stay safe, or remain a Jew and risk everything. It's a choice she's been walking toward her whole life, from the days of her youth when her family lit the Shabbat candles in secret. Back then, she saw the vast possibility of the world, outlined in the beautiful pen and ink maps her...

Depicting a 16th-century Spain rife with zealotry and Machiavellian scheming, Carr's fiction debut is a satisfying effort. Carr (Blood and Faith: The Purging of Muslim Spain) is an expert on the region's history of religious tensions and puts that knowledge to good use here. The novel begins with the gruesome murder of a lecherous priest in Aragon, a mountainous territory in northeastern Spain. Though the inhabitants of Aragon "like to run their affairs...

"The year 1557. Fray Daniel de Ecija is a novice of the Hieronymite Monastery of San Isidoro del Campo who is fascinated by the new ideas being introduced by his friend Casiodoro de Reina. Seville seems to be revolutionized by the riches coming from America and the ideas from Germany. The printing press has managed to spread the teachings of Luther and Erasmus throughout Europe, but the Inquisition is lurking. The monks are warned of an imminent raid...

Crippled sixteen-year-old Catalina is the one person unable to join in the festivities of the Feast of the Assumption. But then she has a vision of the Virgin, and is miraculously cured. In the dark days of the Spanish Inquisition, such a claim to blessedness has serious consequences, especially when Catalina seems more inclined to obey her heart than the demands of the Church.