Dark and Deepest Red

Strasbourg, summer 1518. A sickness spreads through the city and women dance in the streets, some of them until they collapse and die. Rumors of witchcraft start to circulate, and suspicion settles on Lavinia and her family. To protect herself and the people she loves, Lavinia may have to do something unimaginable.

Five hundred years later, a pair of red shoes fastens itself to the feet of Rosella Oliva and forces her to dance without control. The shoes pull her toward Emil, a boy who knows the history of the dancing fever better than anyone. His family was blamed for it centuries ago.

Emil does not know the whole of what happened in 1518. Rosella needs the truth about that summer, because it may decide whether she survives the shoes.

The novel runs on two timelines, one in the sixteenth century and one in the present, and moves between them. It is a fairy-tale retelling that pairs The Red Shoes with the recorded history of dancing plagues. Expect a dark, eerie atmosphere in which accusation and fear drive the danger as much as the sickness does.