Dante’s Daughter - Kimberly Heuston

The fictional memoir of Antonia Aligheri vividly brings to life the politics and hardships that shaped her life as the daughter of the famous Italian Poet, Dante. In 14-th century Italy, Dante is exiled from Florence for political reasons. His family flees, and, in the process, are split up. After five years of living with her aunt and uncle, Antonia is reunited with her father, and he asks her to join him in his travels to France, in his search for truth. Living off his wealthy patrons, she gets thrown from poverty and destitution to riches time after time, all the while establishing her own perceptions of life and nuturing her own artistic talent for painting and sketching. This story is intensely historical, but the facts are so intricately woven with the story and Antonia's thought-process/life, you don't feel as though you are learning anything until you are finished and think back on it. Dante's Daughter, by Kimberly Heuston, is very well written, with personal growth and maturity well-combined with the politics of those times. If you don't like historical fiction, however, you want to avoid it as it follows that genre exactly.

Chelsea Grimmer

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