Very few knew Antonia, despite her fame as La Stella di Venezia.
In decadent 18th century Venice, she develops from Vivaldi's star pupil into his musical colleague and the pride of Venetian music. After falling in love with Orlando Sagredo - master planner of the Palio - Antonia recognizes the emotional bondage she has never questioned.
Antonia of Venice is inhabited by brilliant musicians, avaricious politicians and ineffectual rulers of the Republic. Through it all, the people and music Antonia loves take the reader into the depths of revenge and selflessness, as the story advances the timeless, feminine heroic as a powerful and equal partner to the masculine.
Praise:
★★★★★ - "Drama, pathos, love, intrigue, murder... highly recommended."
★★★★★ - "Ellyn Peirson's Antonia of Venice is a work of art not to be missed."
★★★★★ - "Gripping, mystical and sometimes dark, this one of the most remarkable books I have read in years."
★★★★★ - "Intriguing and passionate... A beautiful love story."
★★★★★ - "By far one of the finest historical fiction stories any fan could hope for... I found it as good a tragedy as Romeo and Juliet."
★★★★★ - "...beautifully written, verging on poetry in parts. I couldn't put it down."
★★★★★ - "I've never read a book that was so engaging and moving... Thank you so much for sharing this beautiful story."
About the Author: My whole childhood was spent in Regina, Saskatchewan, in the same house, about a block away from the intersection of the Canadian National and the Canadian Pacific Railways. I moved to "the east" as a rite of passage when I was eighteen. The bleak prairies live deep within me. They are most evident in the two completed short stories - Joey and Veronica. Now that I've completed the my "career path" as a social worker and individual counsellor, I'm able to have writing, photography and photoart as my chief occupations. I perceive writing as the energetic combination of attention, eccentricity, music, perception and solitude. I love seclusion and thrive in an environment of music, Venetian glass, camera lenses, great writers living on my shelves and my family and very special friends. I happen to be Canadian with roots in England and France and a heart in Italy. I live in Guelph, Ontario, and at the family cottage on the northern shores of Lake Huron. Having been raised by parents who were accomplished musicians, I tend to err on the side of believing my musical knowledge is not, shall we say, noteworthy. However, compared to many people's, it is extensive. I never heard my ex-concert-mistress-mother play her violin. I yearned to know her instrument. I yearned to hear her play; but she wouldn't. I think now it was some kind of perfection compulsion. Nevertheless, my younger sister and I grew up immersed in music. My mother's prodigious piano skills accompanied my father's beautiful tenor voice. And we talked as a family... in depth. Margaret and I benefited from the musical, intellectual and spiritual environment our parents, mainly our father, created. One particularly quirky fascination I developed was that at age four, I fell in love with Venice. My eccentric and multi-talented mother introduced me to the strange city, so physically far from Regina, Saskatchewan. Somewhere along the line, my mother had learned that Vivaldi, whose music she had come to love as much as Bach's, had had an orchestra of female musicians. In the 1700's? Impossible! True. It was as though my mother had lived in the city.
