“Romeo & Juliet is the greatest love story ever told – and every story has a beginning.”
THE MASTER OF VERONA will be published in 2007 by St. Martin’s Press. With the permission of my editor, this blog allows me to post a few chapters prior to that, but it also will act as a forum for the background to the creation of the story and the whole publication process. Photos and maps, essays and quirky asides, and the Director’s Cuts, scenes that just didn’t make it into the final edit.
The novel itself is historical fiction. Set in Italy in the year 1314, it follows Pietro Alaghieri, son of the poet Dante. The Inferno has just been published as father and son reach the city of Verona, the rising star of Lombardy. The city’s ascension is due solely to one man, Cangrande della Scala, the Master of Verona.
Trying to step out of his father’s growing shadow, Pietro is swiftly drawn into two conflicts – the first, a duel between his two close friends, Capulletto and Montecchio. The second, a plot against Cangrande and his chosen heir, a bastard son born under the sign of Mercury. Swordplay and horseplay, philosophy and astrology, warfare and feuds, all lead to a final confrontation that will determine the fate of the child, and of Verona itself.
