A friend and financial backer to Christopher Columbus, chancellor in King Ferdinand's court, widowed father of young Gabriel, and a man troubled by his family's conversion to the brutal Christianity imposed by the Spanish Inquisition, Luis de Santángel wonders if his restless soul can find redemption in the world across the ocean. This fine debut novel by translator and screenwriter Mitchell James Kaplan, a winner of the Independent Publishers Award Gold Medal for Historical Fiction, brings 15th-century Spain to life through Santángel's story and that of Judith Migdal, a Jewish woman learning to become a silversmith in Muslim Granada.
"Kaplan has done remarkable homework on the period and crafted a convincing and complex figure in Santángel in what is a naturally cinematic narrative and a fine debut."—Publishers Weekly
"This novel recreates a historical moment of vast and far-reaching changes as well as the complex personality of Santángel, the high government official who placed his hopes for redemption far beyond his society's horizons."—Reform Judaism Magazine
