Dear ____,
Thank you for your kind and encouraging comments on my previous submission to you, and for inviting me to send you future works. I recently completed an 87,000-word historical YA novel, THE OTHER GRACIA.
In sixteenth-century Venice, the canals shimmer and the courtesans laugh, while agents of the Inquisition stalk through the streets, looking for traitors and heretics. And on the night of her first ball, Chica Nasi is busy avoiding her future husband, plotting with her best friend, and flirting with an unavailable young nobleman.
But Chica is from a family of traitors and heretics, and her past is about to catch up with her. In the heart of her glittering life lies a dangerous secret: although they have been baptized as Christians, her family secretly clings to its original, Jewish faith. When they are betrayed to the Inquisition, it is up to Chica to save her family by discovering who turned on them. Her search will take her from the halls of a convent, to a grand countryside villa, to the streets of a plague-ridden city — and to a truth that will challenge everything she believes in.
THE OTHER GRACIA is based loosely on the life of Dona Gracia Nasi, a remarkable Renaissance crypto-Jewish merchant.
I have four young adult fantasy novels published by Greenwillow/HarperCollins: MISTWOOD (2010), NIGHTSPELL (2011), DEATH SWORN (2014), and DEATH MARKED (2015). Both MISTWOOD and DEATH SWORN were on the Kirkus Best Books for Teens list, and DEATH SWORN was a Teen Vogue “Most Exciting YA Book” of the year. I have also published many stories, including the Nebula-nominated “Nanny’s Day” in Asimov’s Science Fiction (2012).
The first five pages of THE OTHER GRACIA are copied below.
I look forward to hearing from you.
Best,
Leah