Historical fiction · The Remaking of the House, I
The Debtor's Letter
Genoa, 1453. A fallen empire, a widow's debt, and a house to rebuild from its ledgers.
Genoa, 1453. Constantinople has fallen and Pera has been stormed; the eastern trade the house has lived on is going with them. Pellegro Vivaldi's ventures at Pera and Caffa are now worth forty in the hundred. His son-in-law dies at Pera leaving debts, and one of them carries his widow's name. Bianchina opens a book of her own and sets out to rebuild the house from its accounts. One of her brothers sails east, into what is left of the old world. The other goes west to Seville, Lisbon and the Guinea caravels, after a debtor who has owed the family 340 lire since 1448.
The Debtor's Letter opens The Remaking of the House, a family saga that follows the Vivaldi across the centuries as the center of the Western world moves from the Levant and the Mediterranean to the Atlantic.
Some of them will gamble and win, others gamble and lose, and some will play it safe and wither.
A novel of Genoa in 1453, about a widow who opens a book of her own and rebuilds the house after the eastern trade collapses.
The Debtor’s Letter opens The Remaking of the House, a family saga of the Vivaldi of Genoa. The ebook, the paperback (ISBN 978-0-557-73189-3, 568 pages) and the hardcover are out now from the author’s store.