Death Comes as Epiphany

In 1139, Catherine LeVendeur is a novice at the Paraclete, the convent led by the famous scholar Heloise. When a psalter created at the convent surfaces with passages secretly rewritten to carry heretical meaning, Heloise sends Catherine back into the secular world to discover who tampered with it and why. Catherine's investigation leads to the household of a powerful family, a string of suspicious deaths, and a forger whose work could destroy the convent's reputation. Drawing on her training in manuscripts and theology, and on a growing attachment to a stonemason's apprentice, Catherine must untangle the plot before it costs her everything. Newman, a medievalist, grounds the puzzle in the real intellectual ferment of 12th-century France.