The Novice ~ Paperback ~ Mirella Sichirollo Patzer

A desperate flight from an obsessed captor, and a life and death search to reunite with her one true love. In 10th century Naples, Saracens run rampant, annihilating villages, murdering women and children. Death and despair is everywhere. Alone in the world, Sara is a young novice plagued with doubts about taking her final vows. When her convent is attacked, she flees for her life straight into the arms of a group of Saracens who leave her to die alone in the woods. An honorable cavaliere named Nicolo comes to her rescue and offers to take her to the safety of Naples. As they journey together, they are irresistibly drawn to each other. Believing Sara to be a nun, the honorable Nicolo is torn between love and duty to respect her vows. Heartbroken, he does what honor demands and sets her free before she can tell him the truth that she is not a nun. In her search to reunite with Nicolo, she encounters Umberto, a dark and dangerous man who will stop at nothing in his obsession to possess her. With her sharp intellect, and her heart, Sara must rely on her own courage and strength to escape her abuser and find the only man she will ever love. A story that burns with intensity, intrigue, and passion from the author of the Orphan of the Olive Tree.Author BiographyMirella Sichirollo Patzer is a novelist, researcher, blogger, and history afficionado. A true blue Taurean in every way, Mirella was born in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, but grew up in Calgary, a city famous for the Calgary Stampede, oil companies, and the wild west. Mirella is first generation Italian Canadian who likes a clean house but hates housework, detests winter, and is mildly claustraphobic. She loves books, cooking, writing, and a good helping of her homemade tira-mi-su. Her short story, Down Three Steps, was featured in the Canadian best selling anthology, Mamma Mia: Good Italian Girls Talk Back. She is the author of The Pendant, The Blighted Troth, The Contessa's Vendetta, and her latest, Orphan of the Olive Tree. Mirella is currently working on a novel of the life of Mathilde of Ringleheim, The First Queen of Germany. Meticulously researched and filled with memorable characters, it is the fictionalized biography of one of the most fascinating and influential women of the 10th century. Mirella lives with her family in Cochrane, Alberta, Canada but travels regularly to her condo in Great Falls Montana where she hides away to write.