Imminence tells the tale of Isabella, a twenty-four-year-old woman with visionary skills, an uncommon ally, and close but complicated ties to the ruling Medici family who must act expeditiously to ensure that the Florentine republic does not succumb to three menacingly near threats in the fall of 1494: civil war, tyranny, and invasion by the approaching French king and his army of unprecedented size and destructive power.  

A vulnerable agent for political change, Isabella is caught in an alarming conflict between the increasingly autocratic de facto ruler of Florence, Piero, and his more popular, politically revolutionary cousin Lorenzo, her former lover, now a secret vassal of the French king. Veronica, Isabella’s deceased aunt and the novel’s narrator, is a reluctant witness to events who works to assist and protect her niece while struggling to make sense of her own ambiguous presence in the world. Will Isabella’s inspired actions help her ex-lover and her beloved Florence, or will they condemn her and her family to exile or death? Will Veronica find a way to be heard or seen when it matters most?

Combining fiction and fact, imagined stories and documented histories, Imminence is a novel about power, connection, and what it means to truly see and be seen. It explores political history, autocracy, sovereignty, and freedom as well as the experience of being a woman in Renaissance Italy.

If you would like to listen to a professionally recorded reading of the first chapter of Imminence, I have made one available for screening here.

For more on the historical context of the novel, see my scholarly article on the French descent into Italy in autumn 1494 here.