Poinsettia Girl: The Story of Agata della Pieta - Paperback

by Jennifer Wizbowski (Author)

Two worlds are waiting for her. She can only choose one.

Venice, 1710.

To the noblemen crowding the grand halls of Venice, the Figlie del Coro are miraculous, voices drifting through iron grates, adorned with poinsettias, untouchable and divine. To ten year old Agata, freshly stripped of her mother and delivered to the Ospedale della Pietà, the world behind those grates is simply the only world she has left.

But the Pietà is not only a cage. It is also a crucible. Under the demanding love of her Maestra and the fierce sisterhood of girls who chose each other when the world would not choose them, Agata is remade. Grief becomes grit. Silence becomes song. A girl who arrived with nothing becomes the conservatory's brightest star; a musician whose gift carries the echo of everything she has survived. She has found, at last, herself.

Then a marriage proposal reaches her from beyond the grate. A man offering her a name, a family, the life stolen from her the day her mother died. And the choice she never imagined having becomes the only thing left to face.

Based on the true story of Agata della Pietà - one of the first female composers of the 18th century - Poinsettia Girl is a heartbreaking coming-of-age novel set in the allure and intrigue of Vivaldi's Venice.

For readers of Sarah Dunant and Ann Patchett's Bel Canto.