Isabela's Way: A Novel

Isabela's Way: A Novel by Barbara Stark-Nemon. Portugal, early seventeenth century. The Inquisition has arrived, and it is watching the New Christians, families pushed out of Judaism a generation ago and never quite trusted since. Fourteen-year-old Isabela has a gift for needlework and no reason to think the Inquisitors want her. Then a stranger brings a message from her father, who is away travelling, and Isabela has to leave home and stitch her way along a hidden chain of sanctuaries that moves Conversos, secret Jews, across Portugal, Spain, France and Germany. The coded symbols she sews carry more danger than she knows, and what she learns on the road overturns everything she believed about where her family came from. A coming-of-age novel about resistance, craft and love, for readers of Ruta Sepetys.