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A Poisoner’s Tale
by Cathryn Kemp
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Palermo and Rome, the seventeenth century. Giulia Tofana grows up in the shadow of her mother, Teofania, an herbalist whose remedies include Aqua Tofana, an undetectable poison supplied to women trapped in violent marriages. After her mother’s fate forces Giulia to flee Sicily, she establishes an apothecary in plague-stricken Rome and gathers a close network of healers and poisoners who conceal a lethal trade beneath legitimate medicines, childbirth herbs and fortune-telling.
In 1656, deaths among the city’s husbands begin to attract attention while Pope Alexander VII and the Holy Office pursue heresy and witchcraft. As suspicion closes around Giulia, her daughter and the women she protects, acts presented as rescue become increasingly difficult to separate from murder. Kemp reimagines the disputed legend of Giulia Tofana as a story of maternal inheritance, female solidarity, papal authority, domestic abuse and the moral cost of covert justice.
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