A sumptuous novel of love and loss set in 17th-century Spain. From the author of the bestselling novel, ‘The Binding Chair’.

As Marie Louise de Bourbon, niece of Louis XIV, journeys south from Versailles to marry the Spanish king, she is forced to abandon the cumbersome orange trees brought from her beloved Versailles, leaving them to wither in the chill Pyrenees. This loss presages the future that awaits her, in a court riven by intrigue, with an impotent husband who demands an heir. Marie’s fate is dreamed of by Francisca de Luarca, as she sits in her prison cell far from the Queen’s chamber. This imaginative Castilian silk grower’s daughter has fallen passionately and dangerously in love with a young priest.

In this luscious, hypnotic novel, Kathryn Harrison twists together their stories, bringing to vivid life the wonders and the horrors of 17th-century Spain, a world convulsed by poverty and religious upheaval.