THE ROSE OF LIMA: A NOVEL FIRST SAINT AMERICAS

In colonial Lima, Isabel Flores de Oliva is expected to marry well and protect her family's fragile respectability. Instead, she chooses prayer, service, and a life that defies convention. Known to history as Saint Rose of Lima, she tends the sick, supports her household through gardening and embroidery, and challenges those who exploit the powerless. But her severe devotion frightens the people who love her-especially her sharp-witted, fiercely protective mother, María.Blending documented history with imaginative reconstruction, The Rose of Lima restores the complicated young woman beneath the halo: stubborn and compassionate, devout and uncertain, capable of humor, pride, sacrifice, and change. At its heart is the moving struggle between a daughter determined to belong entirely to God and a mother learning that love cannot become ownership.The Rose of Lima is a historical novel about faith, family, colonial injustice, and the woman who became the first canonized saint born in the Americas.