A nineteenth century Spanish seamstress flees her village for Morocco in a novel with "a magical realist aspect . . . An epic sweep and a richness of characterization" (The Independent). They say Frasquita is a healer with occult powers; that perhaps she is even a sorceress. Indeed, she has a remarkable gift, one that has been passed down to the women in her family for generations. From mere rags, she can create gowns and other garments so magnificent, so alive, that they mask any defect or deformity. They bestow a blinding beauty on whoever wears them. But Frasquita's gift makes others in her small Andalusian village jealous. And when her gambling husband brings misfortune on their family, Frasquita travels across southern Spain and into Africa with her five children in tow. Her exile becomes a quest for a better life, and a way to free her daughters from the fate of her family of sorcerers. "Like the beautiful...

This Goncourt Lyceens Award–winning novel is "a powerfully visualized magic-realist fable" of secrets, faith, and female defiance in twelfth century France (Kirkus Reviews). France, 1187. On the day of her wedding, the beautiful fifteen-year-old Esclarmonde scandalizes the court when she refuses to marry the knight chosen by her father, the brutish lord of the domain of Whispers. Defying her father's wishes, she vows to give herself to God. To punish her willfulness, her father imprisons her in a cell adjoining the castle's chapel. Instead of the peaceful solitude she sought, Esclarmonde finds in her cell the crossroads between the living and the dead. Walled in, with nothing but a single barred window connecting her to the outside world, Esclarmonde exerts a mysterious power over the kingdom. The virgin sorceress reaches a saint-like status, and men and women journey from far and wide to hear her speak. When even her own father...