In 16th-century Europe, where the Reformation shakes the foundations of empire, one woman dares to want more than her humble birth affords her. Barbara Blomberg is beautiful and fiercely ambitious, trapped in a world that grants women so little yet demands so much. She must choose between two men who represent utterly different fates: the steady devotion of Wolf Hartschwert, her childhood friend whose love has never wavered, and the dazzling, dangerous Pyramus Kogel, a nobleman whose charm masks something she cannot quite read. Georg Ebers weaves the intimate drama of one woman's heart colliding with history itself, set against the tumultuous backdrop of religious upheaval and social transformation. This is a novel about what women sacrifice when they reach beyond their station, and what it costs to want something badly in a world designed to keep them small.
