Award-winning author Lois Leveen dwells in the spaces where literature and history meet. A confirmed book geek, she earned degrees in history and literature from Harvard, the University of Southern California, and UCLA, and taught on the faculty of UCLA and of Reed College. Lois' work has appeared in the "New York Times," the "LA Review of Books," the "Chicago Tribune," the "Huffington Post," the "Wall Street Journal," "The Atlantic" and on NPR.

She joins us for Second Sunday and will touch on her favorite topics--history and literature--as she discusses her new novel, JULIET'S NURSE.

About the novel:

In death-ravaged Verona, Angelica, a mother mourning her day-old infant, enters the household of the powerful Cappelletti family to become the wet-nurse to their newborn daughter Juliet. Over the next fourteen years, Angelica becomes caught up in the Cappelletti's darkest secrets. But when those secrets erupt across five momentous days of love and loss, Angelica must confront her own deepest grief to find the strength to survive.

By turns comic, sensual, and tragic, JULIET'S NURSE gives voice to one of literature's most memorable characters, a woman who was both insider and outsider among Verona's wealthy ruling class. Leveen lays bare the romance and intrigue of interwoven loyalties, rivalries and jealousies only hinted at in Shakespeare's play.


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