"Of Galileo's three illegitimate children, the eldest best mirrored his own brilliance, industry, and sensibility, and by virtue of these qualities became his confidante. Born Virginia in 1600, she was thirteen when Galileo placed her in a convent near him in Florence, where she took the most appropriate name of Suor Maria Celeste. Her loving support proved to be her father's greatest source of strength throughout his most productive and tumultuous years. Her presence, through letters which Sobel has translated from their original Italian and masterfully woven into the narrative, graces her father's life now as it did then. Moving between Galileo's public life and Maria Celeste's sequestered world, Sobel illuminates the Florence of the Medicis and the papal court in Rome during the pivotal era when humanity's perception of its place in the cosmos was being overturned and when one man sought to reconcile the Heaven he revered as a good Catholic with the heavens he revealed through his telescope."

Now going to PrincessJCM in Ireland as a RABCK, it was part of her Wish List. Enjoy! :o)

Arrived today! Thank you so much for the RABCK :-) Very kind of you! It might take me awhile to read it b/c I have a lot of my books on my TBR. But I will be sure to pass it on once I read it :-)