Constrained by their small 17th-century English town, two independent, spirited sisters push the limits of propriety--one journeys to America where she disappears, and the other, trained in the physician's arts, sets off to find her in a wild, uncultivated land where old rules no longer apply.

Stunningly detailed, richly plotted, and emotionally engrossing, The Real Minerva is the story of three women forging their own paths in a Midwestern farming community. In 1923, as book-loving Penny enters adolescence, her mother, Barbara, pulls her out of school to send her to work. Destined to become a cleaning woman like her mother, Penny sees no escape from her bleak existence until a scandalous figure arrives in the town of Minerva, Minnesota: Cora, very pregnant, very headstrong, and very alone, has come to make a home on her grandfather's farm. Intrigued by this curious new resident,...

Named One of the Best Books of the Year by the St. Paul Pioneer Press

"An absorbing bildungsroman that grapples with strikingly contemporary issues of gender and religious identification"--New York Times Book Review

"An exquisite portrait of a Renaissance woman pursuing her artistic destiny in England and Italy, who may--or may not--be Shakespeare's Dark Lady."--Margaret George, best-selling author of Elizabeth I

Aemilia Bassano Lanier is beautiful and accomplished, but her societal conformity ends there. She frequently...