Born of a Spaniard and a mixed-race woman, young Concepcion Benavidez was apprenticed as a scribe to a convent. At nineteen, she escapes and is captured in the siege of Vera Cruz in 1683. She unexpect
Traces the life of Athena, an abandoned daughter of a Transylvania gypsy, in a tale told from the viewpoints of such characters as her adoptive journalist mother, a teacher of calligraphy, and an actr