Julie Jacobs is teaching a summer Shakespeare course when she learns that her aunt is dead. Arriving home for the funeral, Julie finds out that her aunt left her estate and everything else to Julie’s twin sister Janice. The only thing Julie gets is a letter from her aunt, with instructions for her to return to Italy to look for something her mother left behind for her.
Full of questions, Julie arrives in Italy and is instantly befriended by Eva Maria Salimbeni. As Julie retrieves the treasure that her mother left behind and begins unravelling the mystery behind her real name—Giulietta Tolomei—and her parents’ death, she makes new friends and enemies in Siena.
Can she trust the handsome Alessandra Santini? Is he the Romeo she’s been waiting for or an evil Salimbeni still bent on wreaking destruction on any Tolomei? Who is Umberto, the man she knew as her aunt’s butler and her surrogate father? And what happened in Siena in 1370 to the original Romeo and Juliet? Is Julie’s family really cursed because of those long-ago events?
More About Juliet
Anne Fortier weaves an intriquing, action-packed tale that alternates between the modern day and the Middle Ages. As Julie pieces together the original story of Romeo and Juliet, readers are taken with her to Siena in the 1340s and 1370s. Siena—both modern and ancient—comes alive with Anne’s detailed descriptions.
Anne says that the inspiration for the novel actually came from the city of Siena, which she visited with her mother in 2005. When she learned that the original version of Romeo & Juliet was published in 1476 in Italy by a writer called Masuccio Salernitano, she had found her story. In response to writing another book about a well-known story, Anne points out that Shakespeare “too, was a wordsmith forcing materials borrowed from previous writers” (essay in the back of the novel).
Publishers Weekly called Juliet “a high-flying debut… [a] love story that reads like a Da Vinci Code for the smart modern woman.” It’s an apt description for this book that takes surprising twists with every chapter and keeps the reader wanting to know what happens next.
More About Anne Fortier
Anne Fortier grew up in Denmark and moved to the United States in 2002. She currently lives in Quebec, Canada. She co-produced the Emmy-winning documentary Fire and Ice: The Winter War of Finland and Russia and has a Ph.D. in the History of Ideas.
Her first novel was published in Denmark in 2005; Juliet (Ballantine Books, ISBN 978-0345516114) was published in 2011. Her next novel, The Sisterhood is now available and takes readers into Greek mythology with a tale about Amazon women and the Trojan War. You can find out more about Anne by visiting her website.
