Historical novels are rare, and well-written historicals even rarer. Most surprising, this novel is Canadian. North of the border, we try harder, like Avis.

Sixteenth-century Venice during the plague. Hannah Levi is a Jewish midwife with a husband captured by the predatory Knights of St. John in far-off Malta. Foremost on her mind is how to pay his ransom. Then a miracle happens, promising both danger and salvation. She is asked to attend a difficult delivery for a wealthy Christian family. Success may raise the needed ducats, but if anything goes wrong, it may cost her life. And to bring forth the baby, she plans to use a device which could attract the wrath of the Inquisition.

Roberta Rich has made her auspicious debut with a stunning novel that seasoned authors would be proud to have written. Her research is meticulous, stemming from a trip to Venice to the Jewish ghetto, where she is able to travel back in time to recreate the experience down to the smallest detail of medical knowledge, politics, religion, and even clothing and cuisine. Whether Hannah is shivering in her tiny room, warming coins on her tongue to melt a peephole in the window to see her adversaries, dining on peacock with the aristocracy, or covering her mouth against the stench of the fabled canals in a midnight assignation, the reader walks at her side.

Moving back and forth with aplomb from Hannah’s quest to the daily hell her husband Isaac faces in his new life as a slave, treading the narrow line of heart-stopping suspense, Rich has fabricated a marvelous brocade equally complex on both sides of the cloth. Her characters come to life with a reality that recalls Chaucer, as finely nuanced, flawed and memorable as the Wife of Bath, the Prioress or other all-too-human villain or hero.



Expect to see this one on many lists for prizes in 2012.