A Thousand Orange Trees Author:Kathryn Harrison As Marie Louise de Bourbon, niece of Louis XIV, journeys south to marry the Spanish king, she is forced to abandon the cumbersome orange trees brought from her beloved Versailles, leaving them to wither in the Pyrenees. This loss presages her future in a court riven by intrigue. Marie's fate is dreamed of by Francisca de Luarca, who sits in a pr... more »ison cell far from the Queen's chamber. The imaginative Castilian silk grower's daughter, the same age as the Queen, has fallen passionately and dangerously in lolve with a young priest.
In this lucious, hypnotic novel, Kathryn Harrison twists together their stories, bringing to vivid life the wonders and the horrors of seventeenth-century Spain, a world convulsed by poverty and religious upheaval.« less