New Novel: HUNTING PIERO by Wendy MacIntyre

Because I was out of town, I was unable to attend this event:

Wendy MacIntyre is a close friend of a close friend of mine (so 2 degrees of separation).  I have read and enjoyed two of her previous novels, Mairi and The Applecross Spell, so I think I will pick up her new one, Hunting Piero, which was published earlier this month. 

The book sounds interesting:  “This novel interweaves Renaissance artist Piero di Cosimo’s fifteenth-century viewpoint with the twenty-first-century reality of two young Canadian students: Agnes Vane, an art history major fascinated by di Cosimo’s multi-layered imagery, and Peter (Pinto) Dervaig, a student of philosophy passionate about preventing cruelty to animals. Both Agnes and Pinto were marginalized in their adolescence because of their unusual appearance. Agnes has slightly simian features. Pinto is a huge man with a multihued skin pigmentation. When Agnes, as a lonely and alienated child, discovers di Cosimo’s empathetic paintings of animals and human-animal hybrids, she feels she is looked upon gently for the first time in her life. That moment influences her decision to become an animal rights activist, a commitment that ultimately brings her both anguish and insight. Her story is echoed by chapters from di Cosimo’s perspective as he pits his solitary vision, of a golden age when animals did indeed speak, against the dictatorial grip in which Savonarola, destroyer of secular art and culture, holds the city of Florence. Hunting Piero is the tale of a passionate moral quest, and equally, a story of redemption and of love tested by tragic missteps and their deadly consequences.” 

 In an article for 49th Shelf, MacIntyre revisits "Canadian novels that make the lives and fates of animals and birds, and human/animal relations, central to their storylines:  https://49thshelf.com/Blog/2017/10/16/Elephants-Bears-and-Birds-Animals-in-Canadian-Literature. 

And check out the author's website:   http://wendymacintyreauthor.ca/.