The Fiery Alphabet
he Fiery Alphabet (click to order) (if any copies remain in stock at distributors...the publisher has just let it go out-of-print as of May 11, 2020)
It’s dangerous for a girl to be a mathematical prodigy in 18th-century Rome. Daniela Messo and her father withdraw themselves from the world, but Giuseppe Balsamo (better known to history as the charlatan Cagliostro) finds them, convinced that Daniela has inherited the secrets of a long-dead Jewish mystic.
Before long, Balsamo and Daniela are crossing Europe en route to Jerusalem, running spiritual con games even as they seek salvation.
The Fiery Alphabet plays out a woman’s life-story against the conflict between 18th-century Enlightenment thought and the mystical traditions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
And the first blurbs are in!
The Fiery Alphabet is a stunning and ambitious novel--philosophical and deeply sensual all at once. Diane Lefer writes with fire on every single page, taking the reader straight to the molten core of life.--Gayle Brandeis, The Book of Dead Birds
What an enchanting and wondrous book. Exploring the mysteries of love and faith in a language so refined it reads like a poem, Lefer transports the reader into eighteenth-century Europe, a complex world pulsing with fecund desire and unrelenting poverty, but ripe, too, with fools and intellectuals as curious and confused as they are devout. In a voice as unique and thrilling as any I’ve encountered in literature, Daniela Messo seeks the secrets not only of her
past, but of life itself.--Robin Oliveira, My Name Is Mary Sutter
It’s dangerous for a girl to be a mathematical prodigy in 18th-century Rome. Daniela Messo and her father withdraw themselves from the world, but Giuseppe Balsamo (better known to history as the charlatan Cagliostro) finds them, convinced that Daniela has inherited the secrets of a long-dead Jewish mystic.
Before long, Balsamo and Daniela are crossing Europe en route to Jerusalem, running spiritual con games even as they seek salvation.
The Fiery Alphabet plays out a woman’s life-story against the conflict between 18th-century Enlightenment thought and the mystical traditions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
And the first blurbs are in!
The Fiery Alphabet is a stunning and ambitious novel--philosophical and deeply sensual all at once. Diane Lefer writes with fire on every single page, taking the reader straight to the molten core of life.--Gayle Brandeis, The Book of Dead Birds
What an enchanting and wondrous book. Exploring the mysteries of love and faith in a language so refined it reads like a poem, Lefer transports the reader into eighteenth-century Europe, a complex world pulsing with fecund desire and unrelenting poverty, but ripe, too, with fools and intellectuals as curious and confused as they are devout. In a voice as unique and thrilling as any I’ve encountered in literature, Daniela Messo seeks the secrets not only of her
past, but of life itself.--Robin Oliveira, My Name Is Mary Sutter
Click here for the Foreword Magazine review.
Susan K. Perry interviews me about the novel for The Creative Atheist. Read it here.
