Amy Hassinger

The Priest's Madonna Amy Hassinger

A historically lush, lyrical, thoroughly enthralling novel about the forbidden love between a woman and a holy man, and about the moral and spiritual struggles of faith. In 1896, a priest in the village of Rennes-le-Chateau in southern France suddenly came into possession of immense wealth. This much is true. What no one knows for sure is where his money came from. The history of the region suggests that he may have stumbled upon clues to a hidden treasure of the Knights Templar. An even more tantalizing possibility is that he discovered coded documents hidden in the structure of his church, documents so threatening to the Catholic Church that he was paid to keep silent. At his death under mysterious circumstances in 1917, his secrets died with him. Yet there is one other person who may have known all ? Marie Drnanaud, the priest's housekeeper and, some say, his lover.