DAMASCENA

Holly Payne's imaginative novel DAMASCENA takes takes place in the 13th century and it follows the mysterious circumstances surrounding an orphaned girl's quest to find her mother --starting in Bulgaria and moving across the Rhodope Mountains to Konya, Turkey -- a quest that leads her to the great Persian poet, Rumi.

DAMASCENA is a novel with a modern sensibility and elegant, crisp prose: Damascena, named after the flowering rosa damascena, grows up in a Bulgarian monastery under a tyrannical monk. In adolescence, she flees the monastery and discovers her remarkable gift for turning roses into rose oil, and reluctantly assumes the role of a living saint for the miracles she performs. After a devastating fire destroys the roses, Damascena escapes to Turkey where she meets the enchanting mystic Rumi, who unlocks the secret of her birth.
Holly’s fascination with the life of Rumi began when she was traveling through Turkey for research on her Barnes and Noble Discover New Writers debut novel, The Virgin's Knot. She investigated two historic mysteries surrounding Rumi's life: the disappearance of his beloved teacher, Shams of Tabriz, and the girl whose faith allegedly galvanized his own—giving birth to the enchanting character Damascena.

Holly Lynn Payne is an internationally published novelist in ten countries whose work has been translated into eight languages. Dutton/Plume published her first two novels, The Sound of Blue and The Virgin’s Knot, her debut novel which was selected as a Discover Great New Writers and Border’s Original Voices book. Her third book, Kingdom of Simplicity was nominated for a national book award in Belgium and was named to the mandatory reading list in Ghent. It has also published in the Netherlands, Taiwan and China, and is the winner of a Marin Arts Council Grant, first place winner of a Benjamin Franklin Award 2010 and won Grand Prize for the Writers Digest Self-Published Book Awards 2011.