Library Journal? 02/01/2014
In 2010, Thomson gave readers a glimpse into his personal life with a heartbreaking memoir, This Party's Got To Stop. No stranger to historical fiction (Air & Fire), he sets his new work in 17th-century Florence, drawing on the life of Gaetano Giulio Zumbo, a Sicilian sculptor granted patronage by the grand duke of Tuscany to create a replica of his wife in wax. Given the cultural climate of Florence and the looming threat of the Roman Inquisition, it is a dangerous commission. In the process of completing the grand duke's order, the novel's protagonist, Gaetano Zummo, falls in love with a local woman with a dark past, runs afoul of a Dominican priest, and uncovers the complicated relationship that links them all together.
