The Blackest Time
Set in the 1300s during the devastating black plague, The Blackest Time is a powerful tale of compassion, love, and the human spirit’s ability to endure immense adversity.
Gino, the central character, is a young man who leaves his family’s farm to find work in a pharmacy in Florence. His experiences show us how people coped in the most horrific time in history.
Shortly after Gino arrived in the city, two years of incessant rain destroyed crops in the countryside, leading to famine and despair in the city. Gino offers hope and help to the suffering— he secures shelter for a woman forced to leave her flooded farm, rescues a young girl orphaned by the plague, and aids others who have lost everything.
The rains had barely ended when the plague hit the city, exposing the true character of its people. While some blamed others for the devastation, the story focuses on the compassionate acts of neighbors helping each other overcome fear and suffering. Doctors bravely risk infection to care for their patients. A woman healer, wrongly accused of witchcraft and driven from the city, finds a new beginning in a village where her skills were appreciated.
Despite the hardships, love blossoms between Gino and a young woman he met at the apothecary. Together they survive, finding strength in each other and hope in a world teetering on the edge.
The Blackest Time is a testament to the strength of the human spirit in overcoming unimaginable tragedy.
Praise for The Blackest Time:
“The complexities and the helplessness of the plague is captured exquisitely in The Blackest Time.”
~ The Independent Book Review
“Tentarelli’s ability to immerse readers in medieval Florence’s sights, sounds, and struggles makes this a novel worth diving into.”
~ The Literary Titan
“The historically rigorous description of the apothecary profession, including the guild that regulates it, is impressively presented by the author, whose research is impeccable.”
~ Kirkus Reviews
“This is truly an uplifting and edifying narrative of the inherent ability of mankind to rise above all the worst trials and tribulations. I enjoyed this story immensely and highly recommend it.”
~ Readers Favorite 5 star review
Meet Gino – Protagonist in The Blackest Time
The Blackest Time is set in Florence, Italy, during the most horrific time in our history, the time of the Black Plague. Florence lost 60% of its population during the plague. What is almost unbelievable is that the plague decimated the population in a mere six months. It arrived in the year 1348 in March and subsided by October. The plague and the destructive rain that preceded it provide a backdrop, but the focus of the story is the compassion, courage, and resilience of the people who coped with the tragedy.
The book begins with Gino, the book’s central character, leaving his family’s farm to find work in an apothecary shop in Florence. Through his experiences, we come to understand the other people in the story. His move from a rural village to a large city mirrors the experiences of many young people today. With no connections in the city, he was alone in his search for work and a place to live. The city’s foul smell, high prices, and unfriendly people made his first days there unpleasant. He spent two nights sleeping in a gristmill before finding affordable accommodation. His search for work was thwarted by a guild official, who informed him that outsiders were not welcome.
A period of near constant rain began shortly after Gino arrived in Florence and continued for two years, destroying crops on farms in the countryside. (Although The Blackest Time is fictional, the two year period of rain resulting in failed crops is an actual historic event.) Gino’s family struggled to raise crops on their farm. To help them by reducing the number of people relying on the meager produce of their farm, Gino brought his sister to Florence and found work for her with a prominent family.
Lucia, Gino’s sister, was a 14-year-old unsophisticated farm girl. In Florence, she was struck by the differences between farm and city life. In Florence, girls not much older than her were married women. Several themes play out in the book. One has Lucia adjusting to city life and growing from a girl to a young woman, while Gino had trouble seeing her as anything other than his little sister.
In contrast with Gino’s experience, Lucia’s was quite different. She was even younger than Gino when he brought her to the city, but thanks to his connections, she had the advantages of a stable job and safe housing. Readers may recognize her story as highlighting the benefits of networking, still important today.
Unrelenting rain made conditions worse. Crops failed completely, forcing families to abandon their farms. While foraging in the hills outside the city for herbs he could use to make medicines at the apothecary shop, Gino discovered a woman from his home village who’d been displaced when her farm flooded. She was living under a screen made of tree limbs and trying to survive by eating wild plants.
Gino took her to shelters in the city, one after another, only to find none had space for her. To get her a place, he offered to help renovate an old building the city was converting into a new shelter.
By the time the plague reached Florence, Gino’s family had been driven from their farm and gone to live with relatives in Pisa. Gino’s most trying time came when he waited at the waterfront waiting for a barge coming upriver from Pisa hoping it would bring news of his family.
Here is a brief excerpt from that scene:
Gino paced back and forth impatiently, waiting for a craft to appear at the bend in the river. He was about to leave when a barge captained by a swarthy, muscular man came into view. Gino ran to the dock, hoping the captain might have news for him.
Gino stood expectantly as the man came toward him and said, “I spoke with your brother.” He locked eyes with Gino. “It’s not the news you wish to hear. I’m sorry to tell you, the sickness took your mother.”
Gino shuddered. The man continued, “Many others who worked with her were also stricken.”
Images flashed through Gino’s mind of his caring mother. He envisioned her picking him up, carrying him to the house, and bandaging his scraped knee when, as a toddler, he had fallen from a tree. He flashed through other memories, ending with the time just before he left for Florence, when he saw in her eyes that she wanted him to go, but she also wanted him to stay.
That night, Gino climbed into bed, clutching the knitted wool cap his mother had given him when he left the farm. He carried the sorrow of his mother’s death like a barb lodged in his flesh, haunted by not knowing whether she had received last rites or whether he would ever visit her grave.
“I should have gone to Pisa,” he berated himself. “I could have held her hand and told her how much I loved her. Her other children were with her at the end, and I was not.”
After Gino recovered…slowly…from that tragic loss, he turned his attention to helping others suffering from the plague. Some people sought scapegoats to blame for bringing the disease. They accused a healer who ministered to the indigent of practicing witchcraft. At risk to himself, Gino smuggled her out of the city at night and brought her to a village that had no doctor and was thankful to have someone to care for their sick. He came upon a young girl who’d been orphaned by the plague and brought her to a woman who’d lost her own child and would care for the girl as her own.
Through these and other trials, Gino became a responsible adult, no longer a simple farm lad. His actions represent the compassion and courage of people who endured and overcame the horrific adversity of the plague. I hope readers see The Blackest Time as an uplifting story. There’s even a love interest, but I’ll let you discover that on your own when you read the book.
 |
| Ken in Florence |
Connect with Ken:
No comments:
Post a Comment