My daughter, Heather, has published her first novel. It is a story of mystery and adventure for teenage and young adult readers. It is set in renaissance Venice, hence the title. Two girls become pals and decide to serve their city as a duo of detectives by apprehending a … The narrative has a great twist, which of course I must not reveal. And there’s much more. Venice is on display in all its glory—nature and art in cahoots, as if in the perfect chords of C major—just to pair one see! (and Sì) with another. And on display via the city’s legendary wash of skullduggery—mostly unofficial, but not altogether. Cassandra Fedele, the famous female humanist is come to life, as is her buddy, the great Venetian painter Giovanni Bellini—someone absorbed by love and memory. Yet still more historical personages of that time take a place within this place among places and times. We are often tempted to think of Renaissance humanism as the prompt for, well, the Renaissance. True enough, but it is the prompt for the Enlightenment, too. And this link is brought forward via a … Once again, I cannot reveal something, in this case the vehicle for transmission of … But it’s a riveting element here, late to appear but in time to seal the story’s coherence. And two elements link our own age (brought out nicely in this week’s Democratic National Convention) to 1500. One is the crushing entrapment imposed on so many by a society’s obscene tolerance for wealth inequality. The other is the exposed, systemic cruelty of women having to submit to patriarchy, the major and minor P-keys. In these two ways, you will feel right at home, as if you stepped out of the Venice of 1500 into the dominant conversations of our age. Oh, there’s another way still—the loyalty and (when needed) sacrifice the best of friends bestow on one another—I hope you’ll feel at home with that, too.