The Chapel: A Novel

“Combines art, art history, and Italian allure into a cerebral romance . . . vividly entertaining.” —Publishers Weekly
 
The tour Elizabeth Berman is on is better suited to her late husband, a Dante scholar who’d masterminded the itinerary as a surprise for their thirty-fifth wedding anniversary before leaving her a widow. Now she is in Italy alone, though she was itching to leave as soon as she arrived in Padua. Her efforts to book a ticket home, though, are stymied by her aggressively supportive children and the ministrations of an incomprehensibly Italian hotel staff.
 
Then, in the Arena Chapel, she comes face to face with the first documented painting of a teardrop in human history—and in the presence of that tearful mother, and the arresting company of the renowned and anonymous women painted by Giotto, she wakes up to the possibility that she is not lost . . .
 
“At last, a love story for adults—wrapped in a sophisticated mystery about art, religion and the fragility of the human heart.” —Elizabeth Benedict, bestselling author of Almost