Agnes is intellectually gifted and thirsts for a life of learning. Unfortunately, she is also a woman of the 9th century. Following the tragic loss of her father she escapes a life of wifedom, by disguising herself as a young man and joining a monastery. Rapture is a gripping and fierce story of a life of devotion, desire and struggle. With a heroine full of fury, strength, lust and faith, this is an astonishing, disturbing and tense read.
Agnes, a child of twelve, dragged through the streets of Rome for declaring Jesus her only and forever spouse. Thrown into a brothel where men were invited to rape Christ's young bride. Man after man struck blind before he could defile her. Enraged, her persecutors dragged her into the street and stripped her clothes but her hair grew instantly to cover her naked- ness. They tied her to a stake in the centre of an arena and set the sticks beneath her alight. The fire burnt bright and high, devoured every scrap of wood as well as the ropes that held her so that, unburnt, she could walk away. Of course they did not let her; they came at her then with swords and stabbed and chopped and her blood came in such quantities and with such force that it filled the arena and drowned her murderers, flowed into the street where the Christians who mourned her soaked it up with cloths which they carried to every corner of Christendom.
