Julie Fine ’10, Flatiron Books, June 2023
Venice, 1717. Fifteen-year-old Luisa has only wanted one thing: to be the best at violin. As a student at the Ospedale della Pietà, she hopes to become a protege of the great Antonio Vivaldi. After a scandal threatens her noble family’s reputation, Maddalena is sent to the Pietà to preserve her marriage prospects. When she meets Luisa, Maddalena feels the stirrings of a friendship unlike anything she has known. Maddalena is a Venetian fairytale about the friendship between the two girls. They must decide what it is they truly want — and what they will do to pay for it. Fine is the author of The Upstairs House, winner of the Chicago Review of Books Award for Fiction; and What Should Be Wild, which was shortlisted for the Bram Stoker Superior First Novel Award.