Kasia's Story
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Reception of the Jews in Poland, by Jan Matejko
Powered by the presence and development of two extraordinary women who were drawn together by chance, circumstance, and courage, Kasia's Story demonstrates how history comes to life…a novel that appeals at many levels, and belongs in any serious historical fiction library.
D. Donovan, Senior Reviewer, Midwest Book Review
Kasia's Story
1519
Krakow, Poland
Before his death, Kasia and her husband Melchior had set out on a spiritual journey to decide if the God of the Church was the same God they felt in their heart. Now Kasia finds herself at the eye of a perfect storm, centered on the question of how to treat Poland's Jewish people. Meanwhile up in Krakow's Wawel Castle, having brought the Renaissance into her adopted land, Poland's new Queen Bona means to play her own hand in the nation's most important decisions.
One step at a time life carries them both, Kasia and Bona, as it does each of us, on a journey of self-discovery.
An eighty year old goldsmith's widow and the young Queen of Poland. Two lives so different yet drawn by the times into a harrowing moment of truth.
Katarzyna Weiglowa --"Kasia"
Queen Bona Sforza
Image: Rafal Hadiewicz' portrait of his mother
Other players
King Zygmunt the Elder
Stanczyk, the King's fool
by Jan Matejko
Hurrem Haseki, wife
of the Sultan Suleiman
Leonardo da Vinci,
who while painting The Last Supper, lived in Milan with the young
Bona Sforza
In KASIA'S STORY, rooted in historical events, we walk with the elderly widow Katarzyna Weiglowa through the last twenty years of her life. A powerful mix of deep compassion, of the kind only the best of us are troubled with, and a need to find her own way and be more than she was, tears her from her quiet life of family and friends. Struggling to hold back a wave of anti-Jewish legislation the country's intellectual elites turn to her to take their message of love and acceptance to legislators gathered for the annual Sejm.
Meanwhile through her own daily joys and battles, political and marital, and while surviving deep personal tragedies, Bona Sforza slowly awakens to a deeper sense of who she is, and how she came to be that way.
As a flood of fear and xenophobia overtakes the nation, Kasia becomes the first woman ever invited to address the Polish legislature. By throwing Christ's words at the assembled patriarchy she is charged with heresy, bringing her life into a climactic intersection with the Queen's.
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Krakow's Wawel Castle, with Bishop Piotr Gamrat and the fool Stanczyk, two important characters in Kasia's Story. Painting by Jan Matejko, 1878.
Click Here to visit Shepherd.com's list
of my favorite books about
the conflict between spirituality and religion
Why does a writer take up the cross of writing a book?
Accepting the Nobel Prize for Literature, William Faulkner put it this way.
"....[Mankind endures because we have] a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance...The poet's/writer's duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past."
Contact the author: parejkok@uwstout.edu
And while you're here
also available on Amazon:
Follow Pliny the Elder, who died in the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79 C.E., through his remarkable life.
"The dialogue flows easily, the research is extremely thorough but smoothly incorporated, and the atmosphere is well-evoked: it adds up to a book that is very strongly recommended."
Review, Historical Novel Society
