BELLADONNA

A tense and atmospheric romance set in a silent convent in Northern Italy in the 1950s.

When Isabella Crowley joins Bridget's class, she immediately becomes a figure of mystery to the fourteen year old girls. She is beautiful, inscrutable and stricken with an exotic and secret illness – and Bridget is pulled under her spell.

In 1957, when they graduate, they have the chance to escape Connecticut to study art at a convent in Northern Italy. Bridget is keen to escape the claustrophobic home she shares with her parents and her invalid sister, and the prejudices of a town that will always see her, and her Egyptian mother, as somehow ‘other' – but mostly, she hopes the trip will bring her closer to Isabella.

In the Academia and La Pentola, among the bartering locals, silent nuns and vacuous American classmates, one woman stands out – the mixed-race nun, Sister Teresa, the only one allowed to break the vow of silence and communicate with the girls. As Isabella's friendship with Teresa blossoms, Bridget finds herself unable to
break away, drawn like a moth to a flame Dark passions begin to take hold, and Bridget will make a choice
that changes all three of their lives forever.