The Maiden of All Our Desires: A Novel Hardcover – February 15, 2022 by Peter Manseau

Description

Author: Manseau Peter

Package Dimensions: 21x210x788

Number Of Pages: 336

Release Date: 15-02-2022

Details: Product Description
For fans of Lauren Groff, Maggie O’Farrell, and Emma Donoghue, a devastating novel of love, intrigue, and community in a time of sickness that remade the world

Fourteenth-century Europe. The Black Death has killed half the known world, and
in an isolated convent, a small group of nuns spends their days in work, austerity, and devotion, chanting the Liturgy of the Hours. But their community is threatened. Rumors of heresy and a scandalous Book of Ursula, based on the teachings of the charismatic former abbess and founder of the order, have prompted the male church hierarchy to launch an investigation. The priest assigned to minister to the nuns, Father Francis, who is wracked by guilt for an unspeakable crime committed during the lawless plague years, was no friend of Ursula and can’t be counted on to defend the order. Disrespect and rebellion infect some novices, and the youngest among them pines for the bishop’s chief inquisitor. And Mother John, the convent’s aging spiritual leader, fears she’s losing her mind after experiencing a vision that brings back her own rebellious past.

As events unfold over the course of a single day, a blizzard that has swept across Europe will break over the convent, endangering the women there and testing their faith. In this astonishing novel, the author of the award-winning
Songs for the Butcher’s Daughter explores the territory between faith and freedom, and how the horrific events of history shape individual lives.
Review
“The Maiden of All Our Desires establishes Peter Manseau as an extraordinary storyteller whose ability to create an ominous mood holds the reader spellbound from the first page to the last. He brilliantly exposes the suppressed desires that shape the destinies of his characters.
Original, eloquent, and heartbreaking but with delightful flashes of humor, this superb novel will be read and reread for decades to come.”—Ann Weisgarber, author of
The Glovemaker

“A harrowing tale of beliefs, bodies, and their volatile intersection, set in a time very distant but so much like our own. Quiet as snowfall yet epic as a storm, The Maiden of All Our Desires is a gorgeous, wise, and haunting novel not soon forgotten.” –Jeff Sharlet, bestselling author of
The Family.

”
With a nuanced touch and a craftsman’s skill, Manseau brings the past alive in this wonderfully evocative novel. Questions of God, sin, and faith are sharply rendered against a backdrop of plague and pestilence, highlighting the turmoil of trying to live a moral life when one’s compass is spinning and twisting in a storm.”—Lenny Bartullin, author of
Fortune

Worldwide Praise for Songs for the Butcher’s Daughter

“An extraordinary novel, and Itsik Malpesh is one of literature’s most stunning achievements.”—Junot Díaz

“Manseau reaches across cultures to compose a living, breathing portrait of a bad-tempered but charmingly eloquent poet and the young man chosen to bring his words forward in time. . . . The translator’s inexperience puts poet Itsik Malpesh’s cynical voice into perspective, as the young man’s clumsy first experiences with modern-day romance stand in stark, sometimes poignant contrast…A terrific book with a believable protagonist who’s given ample room to tell his tale.”—
Kirkus Reviews

“Peter Manseau’s novel creates a Marc Chagall–like world of pathos, humor and enchantment. . . . Drawing on history and poetry, this winsome story brings lovers together and drives them apart.” —
Baltimore Sun

“Seductive and playful, the novel, with many unforgettable scenes, is also a serious meditation on language, love, loyalty and memory.”—
New York Jewish Week

“
Songs for the Butcher’s Daughter is a book about writing, a warm, funny, and fascinating testament to the power of words, a power that outlives a dying language and transcends love.”—
Jewish Book World

“What is a writer to do after writing a memoir subtitled
The Story of a Priest, a Nun, and their Son?