The Gourd and the Stars

"Thou wert born, not a demon, but a light so bright that the darkness cannot touch thee." So the physician monk Jehan d'Auterives tells his adopted daughter Zénaïde, a foundling once discarded out of superstition and fear. Taught medicine by him despite her sex as much as her disabilities, Zénaïde's unconventional destiny will take her from her childhood in a Norman monastery to medieval Paris and the royal court of Louis VII. But in this new world of chivalry and courtly love, pious Louis receives a dramatic prophecy that will send his young physician to Jerusalem and the chaotic eastern kingdom known as Outremer-"beyond the sea." Although dispatched merely as a healer for Baudouin, Jerusalem's leprosy-struck king, Zénaïde soon finds herself drawn into the century-long conflict between the crusader kingdom and its Muslim adversaries, led by the charismatic Salah al-Din. To protect everything that she has come to love in this land of divisions, Zénaïde will need all her ingenuity and empathy to navigate the treacherous factions within Outremer's borders and without. But can she do so without losing her soul? Or her life?