A spellbinding story of loss, romance and betrayal set in 18th-century Portugal, from internationally bestselling Canadian historical fiction author Linda Holeman.
Diamantina is 13 when her father, a Dutch sailor who washed up on the Portuguese island of Porto Santo, abandons her and her African-born mother and sets off for the New World. Unbaptized, tainted by her mother's witchcraft and her foreign blood, the girl is an outcast who seems doomed in her struggle to survive. Diamantina refuses to accept her destiny and vows to escape her circumstances and forge a life of her own, no matter the cost. But as the price of her desires rises, can she live with the choices she has made? Diamantina's odyssey to change her life is a sweeping narrative of starvation and plenty, cruelty and love, disaster and triumph.

Linda Holeman started writing in 1990 and has since then been prolific. She has written twelve works of fiction, for adults and young people. She has also written a novel for children, Frankie on the Run.

Linda's young adult novel Promise Song had roaring success in 1998: selected for the 1998 Books for the Teen Age by the New York Public Library, finalist for the Geoffrey Bilson Award for Historical Fiction for Young People, short-listed by the McNally-Robinson Book of the Year Award, short-listed for the Ontario Library Association Red Maple Award, Choice of the Canadian Childrens Book Centre. Her first collection of stories for adults, Flying to Yellow, came out with Turnstone Press in 1996; one of the stories, `Turning the Worm,` was selected for the Journey Prize Anthology. To date, Linda's work has been translated into French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Greek, Polish, Russian, Serbian, Norwegian, Danish and Swedish.

She has travelled widely, and her past careers include a huge range -- from dairy worker to a decade of teaching. She lives in Toronto, Ontario.

Linda Holeman's profile page

NATIONAL BESTSELLER

“I couldn’t put it down…. A great summertime read.”
—Linda Diebel, The Hamilton Spectator

“This book had me at the opening sentence, never once did the pace falter or the characters disappoint.”
—Leslie Jones, National Post