AUDIOBOOK
About
I was twenty-nine years old when the Arno flooded its banks on Friday, 4 November 1966. On Tuesday I decided to go to Italy, to offer my services as a humble book conservator, to save whatever could be saved, including myself.
The Italians called them "Mud Angels," the young foreigners who came to Florence in 1966 to save the city's treasured art from the Arno's flooded banks. American volunteer Margot Harrington was one of them, finding her niche in the waterlogged library of a Carmelite convent. Within its walls she discovered a priceless Renaissance masterwork: a sensuous volume of sixteen erotic poems and drawings.
Inspired to sample each of the ineffable sixteen pleasures, Margot embarks on the intrigue of a lifetime with a forbidden lover and the contraband volume-a sensual, life-altering journey of loss and rebirth in this exquisite novel of spiritual longing and earthly desire.
The Italians called them "Mud Angels," the young foreigners who came to Florence in 1966 to save the city's treasured art from the Arno's flooded banks. American volunteer Margot Harrington was one of them, finding her niche in the waterlogged library of a Carmelite convent. Within its walls she discovered a priceless Renaissance masterwork: a sensuous volume of sixteen erotic poems and drawings.
Inspired to sample each of the ineffable sixteen pleasures, Margot embarks on the intrigue of a lifetime with a forbidden lover and the contraband volume-a sensual, life-altering journey of loss and rebirth in this exquisite novel of spiritual longing and earthly desire.
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Reviews
"Fascinating entertainment…with a sympathetic heroine, a suspenseful plot, a cast of colorful characters and illuminating meditations on life, art, and love."
Chicago Tribune
"Part mystery, part romance, part guidebook…A lively first novel that communicates the heady peril, as well as the adventure, of Florence after the flood."
New York Times Book Review
"Although the pleasure of reading this book can hardly compare with any of the sixteen, still, Id put it high on the list of pleasures one can have alone."
USA Today