The year is 1502, and seven-year-old Bianca de Nevada lives perched high above the rolling hills and valleys of Tuscany and Umbria at Montefiore, the farm of her beloved father, Don Vincente.
But one day a noble entourage makes its way up the winding slopes to the farm--and the world comes to Montefiore. In the presence of Cesare Borgia and his sister, the lovely and vain Lucrezia--decadent children of a wicked pope--no one can claim innocence for long. When Borgia sends Don Vicente on a years-long quest to reclaim a relic of the original Tree of Knowledge, he leaves Bianca under the care--so to speak--of Lucrezia. She plots a dire fate for the young girl in the woods below the farm, but in the dark forest there can be found salvation as well . . .
The eye is always caught by light, but shadows have more to say.