A visit to Italy's medieval past with Melodie Winawer's The Scribe of Siena

Siena in 1347 may not seem the most desirable time-travel destination, since the Black Death arrived on Italian shores the following year. However, that’s exactly where American neurosurgeon Beatrice Trovato ends up, to her great shock.

Her late brother, a medieval historian based in Italy, had been investigating an intriguing question: Why did the plague hit Siena particularly hard? Following his research leads, Beatrice finds herself pulled into the past, employed as a scribe for a religious hospital, and in the frequent company of fresco painter Gabriele Accorsi, whose 650-year-old journal she had been reading.

Debut novelist Winawer, a neurologist by profession, has written an engrossing historical epic. Her wide-ranging, romantic story moves apace, yet it has considerable meat on its structural bones, with plentiful details on fourteenth-century Sienese daily life, customs, art, and travel.

Despite an overreliance on surprisingly well-preserved documents, clues to the central mystery wind carefully through both time lines as Beatrice gradually unravels a Florentine conspiracy and, always cognizant of what the future holds, takes risks to save those she loves.

The Scribe of Siena was published just yesterday by Touchstone/Simon & Schuster.  I had read it last fall from an Edelweiss e-copy, and the review appeared in Booklist's historical fiction issue, which was out on April 15th.  See it on Goodreads, and you can visit the author's website for more info.