from a supremely talented author comes this brilliant and inventive novel set in rome in four different centuries that explores love in all its various incarnations and ponders elemental questions of good and evil obedience and free will that connect four unforgettable lives spanning two thousand years the everlasting follows four characters whose struggles resonate across the centuries an early christian child martyr a medieval monk on crypt duty in a church a medici princess of moorish descent and a contemporary field biologist conducting an illicit affair outsiders to a city layered and dense with history this quartet separated by time grapple with the physicality of bodies the necessity for sacrifice and the power of love to sustain and challenge faith their small rebellions are witnessed and provoked by an omniscient time traveling satan who though incorporeal nonetheless suffers from a heart in search of repair as their dramas unfold amid the brick marble and ghosts of rome they each must decide what it means to be good twelve year old prisca defiles the scrolls of her father s library felix a holy man watches his friend s body decay and is reminded of the first boy he loved passionately giulia de medici a beauty with dark skin and limitless wealth wants to deliver herself from her unborn child tom an american biologist studying the lives of the smallest creatures cannot pinpoint when his own marriage began to die as each of these conflicted people struggles with forces they cannot control their circumstances raise a profound and timeless question at the heart of faith what is our duty to each other and what will god forgive
katy simpson smith
harper
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