AMAZON SELECTS THE CADENCE OF GYPSIES FOR ITS 2013 LIST OF BEST BOOKS

THE CADENCE OF GYPSIES, written for both young adult and adult readers, has been selected by Amazon for its “2013 List of Best Books.” This is especially nice since it was totally unexpected.

A brief description of THE CADENCE OF GYPSIES is as follows:

Three high-spirited 17 year olds, with intelligent quotients in the genius range, accompany their teacher and mentor, Carolina Lovel, to Frascati, Italy, a few weeks before they are to graduate from Wood Rose Orphanage and Academy for Young Women. Carolina’s purpose in planning the trip is to remove her gifted, creative students from the Wood Rose campus located in Raleigh, North Carolina, so they can’t cause any more problems (“expressions of creativity”) for the headmaster, faculty, and other students – which they do with regularity. Carolina also wants to visit the Villa Mondragone where the Voynich Manuscript, the most mysterious document in the world, was first discovered and search how it is related to a paper written in the same script she received on her 18th birthday when she was told that she was adopted – a search that will take them into the mystical world of gypsy tradition and magic, more dangerous and exciting than any of them could have imagined.

The storyline is woven around the ancient Voynich Manuscript and the mysterious Kaulo Camioes, black gypsies, in a contemporary setting that takes place between Raleigh, North Carolina, and Frascati, Italy. All of the facts concerning the Voynich are accurate, as are the facts relating to gypsy customs, beliefs, and practices. The story itself is fiction.

I had a tremendous amount of fun researching the Voynich, as well as gypsies for whom I have a new-found respect and understanding. If you get a chance to read THE CADENCE OF GYPSIES over the summer, I would love to hear what you think of it.

Barbara