EIGHT STRINGS

Ever since her grandfather introduced her to eight-string marionettes, Francesca has dreamed of performing from the rafters of Venice's popular Minerva Theater. There's just one problem: being a puppeteer is a profession that's only open to men.

When her father arranges to sell her into marriage to pay off his gambling debts, seventeen-year-old Francesca flees her home and becomes "Franco" - a young man who soon thereafter joins the Minerva's ensemble as the protégé of theater's mercurial director, Pietro Radillo. What begins as an act of survival to pursue her craft transforms Franco, both inside and out, as she rises within the ranks of the puppeteers. It isn't long before Franco stumbles across a long-lost childhood friend, Annella, now the striking companion to one of Venice's high-profile crime bosses. This chance encounter catapults Franco into a glamorous and dangerous world of intrigue and erotic pursuits, and she ends up finding herself at the center of a conspiracy that threatens her life, her beloved, and the fate of the Minerva. A gender-bending debut novel set in turn-of-the-20th-century Venice, EIGHT STRINGS takes its cue from earlier historical fiction about queer women in the theater from writers such as Sarah Waters and Jeanette Winterson, reimagining the classic story of a woman disguised as a man and unspooling a saucy, sensuous and glittering romance that will have readers spell-bound. Margaret DeRosia is a writer, editor, and historian originally from Michigan. She has taught film, literature, and digital media at the University of California at Berkeley and Santa Cruz, Sonoma State University, the California College of Art, and Western University. DeRosia was also the personal assistant to the novelist- showrunners Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman; a publicist for Norman Jewison's Canadian Film Centre; and editorial contributor to the feminist media commons, Liisbeth. She is a dual citizen of the U.S. and Canada.