The Blood Remembers
Rose Orlando-Kirkland, a jewelry designer from California, is haunted by the voice of a twelfth century woman. For reasons Rose can’t comprehend, she is propelled toward Oxford, then Vieste, Italy where her father was born, then to Normandy. In stages, Rose comes to identify this disembodied voice in her head as that of Rosamonde, a mistress of King William of Sicily.
The journey on which Rose embarks is not only one of distance but of time and space, spanning more than eight centuries. Intent on following the path set out for her by her Hauteville/Altavilla ancestors, Rose delves deeply into the Norman-Sicilian connection of which she is a product. None of the secondary characters are extraneous; indeed, each of them seems to shed more light on Rose’s quest.
Emperor Frederick II, his magus, Michael Scot, and Frederick’s mother, Constance, are just some of the historical personages who fill the pages of this sometimes strange, often engaging first novel. If one overlooks Stanfill’s apparent need to fill Rose’s life with extra-marital romances while she searches for her roots, the story is really quite interesting.
