Gabriela Mondini, a young woman living in 16th-century Venice, was taught the art of physick by her father, and before he abruptly left their home, she was allowed to treat female patients. Afterward, though, the local guild banned her from practicing medicine because of her gender. This is the premise driving Regina O'Melveny's debut novel, The Book of Madness and Cures.
At 30, bereft of her profession and still mourning the death of her lover, Gabriela tires of inactivity and her mother's demands to find a husband and start having children. She decides to go in search of her father, whose enigmatic letters stopped some time ago without explanation. She had been helping him with his magnum opus, The Book of Diseases, and she wants to continue the work, but not without her father. So she gathers provisions for an extended journey and, with her servants Olmina and Lorenzo, sets off in search of a man whose mental state--based on his final letters--is questionable.
The three follow clues in the letters as they traverse Switzerland, Germany, France, Scotland, the Netherlands and finally Morocco. Is Gabriella's father going mad and, wishing to spare her and her mother the sight of his diminishing powers, simply lost forever?
What the three find, and what they have lost, form the heart of the story. O'Melveny's meticulous research into Renaissance life throughout Europe turns the novel into a painless history lesson; her grasp of medical lore, herbs and potions of the era is an irresistible combination of alchemy, real medicine and witchcraft. --Valerie Ryan, Cannon Beach Book Company, Ore.