Novelist Gigi Berardi (Allaway) writes also on science, resources & planning, and dance. A Fulbright scholar in Italy and professor at Western Washington University in Bellingham, she teaches in Florence, Italy in summers. She’s written more than 400 reviews and articles for print and broadcast media. Beyond writing, her passions include dance, cheesemaking, travel, and community life on Shaw.
Synopsis of Bianca’s Cure:
A history-driven novel imagining young Renaissance noblewoman Bianca Capello’s experiences as she pursues a cure for malaria in the Medicis’ Florence, a world filled with alchemy and superstition, religious dogma, and political treachery—including within her own family. Her cause is curing malaria, and her tool is artemisia—almost five centuries before the Nobel Prize was awarded in 2015 to a Chinese woman scientist for discovering a cure derived from the same bitter herb. The book probes what might have been, as Bianca’s quest to turn alchemy into science and find a cure—in palaces and sick houses—collides with a city’s intensifying illness.
