Synopsis

Rome 1690. Petronilla Paolini Massimi leaves Castel Sant'Angelo, her husband, and children, accompanied by Fatima, the maid she had converted to Catholicism. She returns to the convent where she grew up. Torn by the pain of separation, she abandons her children, three sons. They are very young, but in their eyes Petronilla has already begun to glimpse a menacing resemblance to her husband, Francesco Massimi, whom she married at the age of ten. Robbed of a vast inheritance, of physical freedom, of every human happiness, her existence has been a strenuous struggle for a single reason for living: writing. But she has paid a very high price. A novel inspired by the historical figure of Petronilla Paolini Massimi (1663-1726).