Muse

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Muse explores the story of the woman who was the inspiration behind Petrarch's sublime love poetry. Solange begins life in the poor streets of 14th century Avignon. When her mother, a harlot, dies in childbirth, Solange is raised by nuns who believe she has the gift of clairvoyance. But after several years in the nunnery where she learns how to write and how to have visions, she escapes to become a scribe in the dirty streets of Avignon, where she meets the poet Petrarch and becomes not only his muse, but his lover.
Later, when her gift for prophecy catches the Pope's ear, Solange becomes Clement VI's mistress and confidante in the most celebrated court in Europe. When the plague kills over a third of Avignon's population and Solange is accused of witchcraft, she's forced yet again to reinvent herself and fight against a final, mortal conspiracy.This is a sweeping historical epic that magically evokes the Renaissance, capturing a time and place caught between the shadows of the past and the promise of a new cultural awakening.

Mary Novik's debut novel Conceit, about the daughter of the poet John Donne, was hailed as "a magnificent novel of seventeenth-century London" by The Globe and Mail. Chosen as a book of the year by both Quill & Quire and The Globe and Mail, Conceit was long-listed for the Scotiabank Giller and won the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize. Canada Reads named Conceit one of The Top 40 Essential Canadian Novels of the Decade. Mary lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, and can be found at www.marynovik.com.