VESTAL VIRGIN

A historical novel features a vestal virgin in ancient Rome encountering the new religion of Christianity.

This book from Basto, following Days to the Gallows (2016), opens in C.E. 60. Cornelia Cosa, the pampered 10-year-old daughter of a prosperous wine merchant, is chosen in a lottery to become a vestal virgin, a member of Rome’s most venerated and venerable female religious society, charged with preserving the morals of society. Vestals serve 30-year terms and are revered by all strata of Roman society. But being torn from her family is naturally a rude shock to Cornelia. In carefully researched and well-crafted prose, the author uses Cornelia as a viewpoint character through which to introduce her readers to the inner world of the vestal virgins (“I climbed the seven steps and entered my new home feeling as bald as a baby bird,” the young girl muses as she begins her journey). Readers meet her fellow sisters in the House of the Vestals and learn the lore and history of the order as Cornelia grows older and adapts to its rhythms. One day, a friend among the vestals takes Cornelia to the house of a man named Paul, leader of the fledgling Christian faith and gadfly to the Emperor Nero. Cornelia sees a “small, bandy-legged man with the balding head and tufts of red and gray hair sticking up on the sides.” Paul impresses her; his message about the ministry of Jesus thoroughly converts her friend and troubles Cornelia’s thoughts. As the years go by, Cornelia’s family experiences business reversals, and Nero deteriorates into a brutal tyrant. Basto does a very readable, confident job of playing all of this against the backdrop of personalities and intrigue inside the Temple of Vesta. Cornelia herself is a lovable, headstrong character who will make a deep impression on readers.

A solidly grounded, atmospheric evocation of Nero’s Rome at a crossroads of faith and crisis.