Kathleen B. Jones

Cities of Women is a work of historical literary fiction inspired by a decade of research on the medieval life and times of the proto-feminist, Christine de Pizan, the first European woman of letters to support herself as a writer. Like A.S. Byatt's Possession, the story moves between present and past in a dual narrative, evoking the spare joys and monumental pitfalls facing medieval women artists, and a contemporary woman who becomes obsessed with medieval books. Verity Frazier, a disillusioned professor of history, risks her career when she sets out to prove that the artist responsible for the illuminations in the medieval manuscripts of Christine de Pizan was a remarkable woman named Anastasia. As Anastasia's story unfolds against the richly evoked 15th century backdrop of moral disaster and political intrigue, yet extraordinary creativity, Verity finds little evidence of the artist's existence, while discovering the missing pieces to make her own life whole.

Cities of Women

Gemma

I hadn't talked of my own daughter since that June day I buried her a decade ago. Now, I pulled the story of her stillbirth out of the deep soil of my soul and wept as I shared the memory of the feel of her flash with another woman, a stranger who was strangely familiar, who understood beyond words why sometimes I cried at the colour of a blue sky, and sometimes I painted it with joy in my heart. As she held me gently in her embrace, I trembled with gratitude at the chance I'd been given to live again in the company of women.

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