The Threads of the Heart

They say Frasquita knows magic, that she is a healer with occult powers, that perhaps she is a sorcerer. She does indeed posses a remarkable gift, one that has been passed down to the women in her family for generations. From rags, off-cuts, and rough fabric she can create gowns and other garments so magnificent, so alive, that they bestow a breathtaking and blinding beauty on whoever wears them; they are also capable of masking any kind of defect or deformity (and pregnancies!).

But Fasquita's gift incites others' jealousy. She is hounded and eventually banished from her home. What follows is an extraordinary adventure as she travels across southern Spain all the way to Africa with her five children in tow. Her exile becomes a quest for a better life, for herself and her daughters, whom she hopes can escape the fate of her family of sorcerers.

Winner of no less than nine literary prizes, a bestseller in France and Italy, and soon to be a major film directed by the author, Carole Martinez's The Threads of the Heart has won the hearts of hundreds of thousands of readers in Europe. For readers who loved The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende or One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez, The Threads of the Heart possesses the lyric beauty of a prose poem and the narrative power of myth and cannot fail to delight.

About the Author

Author Carole Martinez, a former actress and photographer, currently teaches French in a middle school in Issy-les-Moulineaux. She began writing during her maternity leave in 2005.