"In twelfth-century France, two of Europe’s greatest minds met and fell in love. It was a love forbidden by the world around them and eventually they were torn apart from each other. But, the spark of it remained smoldering inside the lovers until their death and beyond. Heloise and her tutor, Peter Abelard, share a devotion passionate in its depth and beautiful in its thoughtfulness. They marry, and Heloise bears a son whom she names Astrolabe. However, all of this must be done in secret, for Abelard is forbidden to wed by the church which considers him a cleric. When the truth of their relationship is exposed, they are separated and punished both in body and soul. Marion Meade weaves history and fiction together in STEALING HEAVEN, an epic story of one of history’s most tragic love affairs. With facts pulled from Heloise’s actual love letters, Meade creates a poetic and sensual tapestry of France in the 12th century."
--This text refers to an alternate
Paperback
edition.
Marion Meade is a biographer and novelist.
Her most recent biography is Lonelyhearts: The Screwball World of Nathanael West and Eileen McKenney. Other subjects include Eleanor of Aquitaine, Madame Blavatsky, Dorothy Parker, Buster Keaton, and Woody Allen. Bobbed Hair and Bathtub Gin: Writers Running Wild in the Twenties tells the story of Edna St. Vincent Millay, Zelda Fitzgerald, Dorothy Parker, and Edna Ferber becoming writers in the Jazz Age.
She has also written two novels set in medieval France, Stealing Heaven: The Love Story of Heloise and Abelard and Sybille.
Aside from her writing, she edited Dorothy Parker's collected works, The Portable Dorothy Parker; Parker's play The Ladies of the Corridor; and introduced Parker's Complete Poems.
