Fierce Dreamer

A Novel

By: Linda Lafferty

Narrated by: Lauren Ezzo

Length: 10 hrs and 24 mins

Publisher's summary

From the bestselling author of The Bloodletter’s Daughter comes a historical novel about a defiant seventeenth-century artist who dared to feed her passions and explore the limitless possibilities of art.

Born in the bustling artist quarter of Rome, Artemisia, daughter of renowned painter Orazio Gentileschi, is unavoidably drawn into a profession unheard of for women. With an innate grasp of color, light, and composition, and inspired by the mercurial Caravaggio, the fiery Artemisia embraces her calling with a precocious brilliance. But as a young woman, she also finds herself oppressed by a powerful patriarchy, and she is forced to endure emotional and physical abuse at the hands of men.

Until a shattering act of violence unleashes Artemisia's righteous fury.

Refusing to be silenced and resolved to best men at their own games, Artemisia does what no woman had dared to do before. She fights back.

A bracing historical novel about a woman boldly at odds with her time, Fierce Dreamer explores the fearless determination that would fuel Artemisia Gentileschi's most courageous works of art and make her independent voice a vital one for our own time.

©2020 Linda Lafferty (P)2020 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.

Amazing strength of a feminine painter

What an amazing strength of character in a woman in the17th century. What she went through to prove that as a painter, she had the right to paint and be recognized, and that rape was wrong was amazing. The is a true story and she was raped, but went on to be a well recognized and important painter for a woman in the 17th century. BRAVO!!!!

Interesting but limited story

I enjoyed the reading very much--a few often mispronounced words ("Holofernes" stands out), but great voice work overall. I wish the novel had covered more of her actual professional life--it ends just as she gets to Florence and the magnificent part of her career begins--but I guess that was a choice by Laura Lafferty. For someone who declared that men would not determine her life, Artemisia is presented with a rather large emphasis on her father, her pushy brother, her rapist, and other males. I appreciated the attention to her mother Prudentia, her artist friend Giovanna Garzoni, her somewhat faltering friendship with her stepmother, and the interactions with the partly blind produce seller. The rape scenes may be triggering to some, and I'm not sure how necessary some details were. In all, an interview read but I'm going to seek out lots of other sources and treatments.