Chapter Seventy-Seven: The Book of Madness and Cures

This novel by Regina O'Melveny is a fun little historical fiction jaunt across Renaissance Europe.  The story follows the fictitious Dr. Gabriella Mondini, the only female physician in Venice at the turn of the 17th century.  She has learned the medical arts from her father, a renowned doctor in Venice, who years earlier departed on a trip through Europe to study other schools of medicine and perhaps to gain inspiration for the encyclopedia of maladies he was compiling.  As his letters have slowly stopped appearing, Gabriella has decided to set off across Europe in search of her father, and this story follows her journey.  I enjoyed reading it, though I don't know if I'd read it again.