Rapture

The motherless child of an English priest living in ninthcentury Mainz, Agnes is a wild and brilliant girl with a deep, visceral love of God. At eighteen, to avoid a future as a wife or nun, Agnes enlists the help of a lovesick Benedictine monk to disguise herself as a man and secure a place at the revered Fulda monastery.So begins the life of John the Englishman: a matchless scholar and scribe of Fulda, then a charismatic heretic in an Athens commune and, by her middle years, a celebrated teacher in Rome. There, Agnes (as John) dazzles the Church hierarchy with her knowledge of the old and new languages of Europe, theology and Church law and finds herself at the heart of political intrigue in a city where gossip is a powerful (and deadly) currency.And when the only person who knows her identity arrives in Rome, she will risk everything to once again feel what it is to be known and loved.