Priest's Madonna Book

For fans of The Birth of Venus, Girl with a Pearl Earring, and The Other Boleyn Girl, Amy Hassinger, author of Nina: Adolescence, delivers this historically lush, lyrical and thoroughly enthralling novel about the forbidden love between a woman and a holy man, and about the moral and spiritual struggles of faith.

In 1896, the priest in a small village in southern France suddenly came into possession of immense wealth. This much is true. What no one knows for sure is where his money came from. The history of the region suggests that he may have stumbled upon clues to a hidden treasure of the Knights Templar. An even more tantalizing possibility is that he discovered coded documents hidden in the structure of his church, documents so threatening to the Catholic Church that he was paid to keep silent. At his death under mysterious circumstances in 1917, his secrets died with him.

Yet there is one other person who may have known all--Marie Dernanaud...

Publishers Weekly

A historical romance that mixes literary heft and pop-fiction indulgence, Hassinger's ambitious second novel (following Nina: Adolescence) makes for a busy, derivative read. Marie Dernanaud, raised a religious skeptic, is immediately attracted to Berenger Sauniere, the devout, charismatic priest who takes over the parish of her small town, Rennes-le-Chateau, in the 1890s. While hiding their dangerous affection for each other behind arguments over religion and revolution, Marie, who narrates, and B renger oversee their church's renovation, which turns up some curious artifacts: a map, a book and an ancient stone carving that might hold a Da Vinci-esque code. (Wearyingly, the stuff does in fact have its origins with the Knights Templar.) With the help of the enigmatic mayor's wife, Madame Simone Laporte, Marie tries to piece together the mystery of the church, but Berenger has confessed that he's being fed a steady diet of cash by a powerful financier who wants access to whatever they find-including possible proof of a bloodline (here's Simone's interest) descended from Jesus and Mary Magdalene. Hassinger believably conveys Berenger's transformation from gentle clergyman to angry, corrupt doubter, and mixes in some tantalizing ancient doings in Judea, but all the competing interests sap the dynamism from Marie, who never achieves a distinct voice. (Apr.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.