Set in 1723 in Siena this book was beautifully written. The setting was amazing, the history and legends behind the city of Siena could not have been depicted better by any other author. Fiorato simply amazed me and kept the pages flowing with her writing. I fell in love with a duchess I did not know, a horseman, and a woman used for her gender mercilessly by her family. I fell in love with a Siena that virtually leapt off the pages and into my dreams.

Siena is a city that has lived through its horses and the most fantastic race of all, the Palio. Families across the city gather together their horses to be chosen for the race. They gather their men to be the elite riders of the Palio. The contrada of Siena have always bet, won, lost, and died by the hand of fate. Yet, this year is to be determined by a group of nine. The nine members each are representing their own contrada who plan to overthrow the race, the city, and most importantly the Duchess. Two women from opposite specters in the city find that their lives have been irreversibly woven together by destiny.

The Duchess Violante Beatrix de'Medici has led her city for years. Forced from her grief by a city in need of a leader, Violante has never looked back nor shied away from her domain. Conspiracy reaches her ears and Violante knows that she must rally allies to defend her city from corrupt men and to keep her haven safe. Finding the strangest allies in the lower classes of the city, Violante has found a messenger boy known as Zebra, a horseman, Riccardo whom fate has brought to her breast, and a beautiful lady, Pia to whom fate has not been kind. Gathering her little army about her, Violante knows that alone they may never win the battle that consumes Siena.

On her nineteenth birthday Pia was given a pendent of a dead queen, a dead husband, and a new husband she wished was dead. What she was not given was the one man she could only dream of, the one man she had seen brave the Palio with all the dignity, courage, and beauty Pia had never seen. Cast into a new contrada, Pia finds herself in the midst of a violence that has consumed every member of her new household. One husband's death led to the beating death of another man and a marriage to something scarier than Pia has ever known. Caught in a conspiracy by her new family, Pia knows that she may hold all the keys to locking the doors of Siena from certain disaster. Playing a part in unraveling the drama about to engulf them just may result in her death, but not aiding Riccardo, the man she loves, is not an option.

Violante was a very strong character and woman to whom I could only greatly admire. Through all her hardships and misfortunes the Duchess kept her promises and aided those around her with a grandeur and style I have not felt in a long time. Throughout the book Pia and her life are compared to legendary woman such as Dante's Pia and the Lady Guinevere. This comparison was very appropriate and eerily accurate. Pia, as a character, was the woman that everyone felt sorry for. While I felt that her trials were enough to drive anyone insane, I marveled at her strength time and again as she overcame diversity.

Book Summary

Amid the intrigue and danger of 18th-century Italy, a young woman becomes embroiled in romance and treachery with a rider in the Palio, the breathtaking horse race set in Siena....

It’s 1729, and the Palio, a white-knuckle horse race, is soon to be held in the heart of the peerless Tuscan city of Siena. But the beauty and pageantry masks the deadly rivalry that exists among the city’s districts.

Each ward, represented by an animal symbol, puts forth a rider to claim the winner’s banner, but the contest turns citizens into tribes and men into beasts—and beautiful, headstrong, young Pia Tolomei is in love with a rider of an opposing ward, an outsider who threatens the shaky balance of intrigue and influence that rules the land.