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A recent trend in historical fiction is the immersion of multifaceted female protagonists into a trade or profession. Sankaran follows suit by introducing another strong female character into the genre. Born an albino in medieval France, Auda endures a dreadful experience: her tongue is amputated by a healer's apprentice who believes she has been cursed by the devil. Unable to speak, she is an avid reader and writer who masters her father's craft as a papermaker at a time when the Church, suspicious of independent thought and communication, tightly controls and monitors access to parchment. When Auda gives voice to her passions through her poetry, both she and her father become victims of the Inquisition. Sankaran deftly illuminates a time of intellectual darkness in this superbly rendered debut.--Flanagan, Margaret Copyright 2010 Booklist

Medieval France is no place to be born albino: when Auda emerges from the womb "undercooked" and "white as bone," an ignorant healer's apprentice tears out the child's tongue to keep her from "spread[ing] the devil's lies." Though her mother dies in childbirth, a small stroke of luck graces Auda's childhood: her father makes his living as a scribe and a papermaker, so she learns reading and writing to compensate for her inability to speak. Together, father and daughter work to make his experimental paper the new standard for France's writing stock (replacing parchment); against the odds, they field an order from the local vicomtesse, who then takes on Auda as her personal scribe. At the palace, Auda grows more independent and finds romance with an artist who saves her from a witch-hunting mob. When Auda begins writing potentially heretical verse about women's empowerment, however, she tempts fate and the inquisition, setting off a chain of unlikely events. Though improbable plot twists detract, Sankaran has created a likable, easy-to-root-for protagonist in Auda. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

When Auda is born with albinism in the medieval city of Narbonne, her nurse believes the infant's appearance makes her prey for the devil and mutilates the child before Auda's father, a literate papermaker, can rescue her. Rendered mute, Auda learns her father's craft and becomes a scribe for local nobility, but finding a legacy of a troubadour's verses to copy sets her to writing on her own. In 1320s France, paper is beginning to provide an affordable alternative to expensive parchment, but its use is watched with suspicion by the Church. As the demand for paper grows with Narbonne's diverse population of Jews, Italians, Gypsies, and other travelers, it also brings the papal Inquisition to town looking for heretics. Auda's encounter with the Good Men, Cathar prefects persecuted by the Inquisition, climaxes with the flood of the river Aude. VERDICT Avoiding being either overly dark or sweet, this debut historical by an author who already plans a second novel about printmaking in Italy has potential for book club discussions and will appeal to readers of medieval historical fiction who enjoyed Brenda Vantrease's The Illuminator.-Mary K. Bird-Guilliams, Wichita P.L., KS (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.