This novel started with a bookâthree books, to be precise, all with family connections, which sat side by side on my bookshelf for years. The first seed from my family tree, and surely the rarest book among my inspirations, was a scholarly monograph published in 1907 titled The Grateful Dead, The History of a Folk Story, written by my great uncle Gordon Hall Gerould, B. Litt. (Oxon.), Preceptor in English in Princeton University. It came down through my mother's side of the family. In 174 densely written pages Uncle Gordon traced the history, through about twenty countries and twenty centuries, of a very old folk tale of that name. The fast-forward version goes: Young man goes out to seek his fortune, and comes across an altercation where the body of a debtor lies unburied until his debts are paid. Our hero forks over his grubstake (varying wildly depending on the version, but always the whole of his resources) and gets the debtor planted. He goes on down the road to further adventures, in the course in which he finds himself supernaturally aided by the grateful ghost of the dead man, in reward for his pious deed.
It was quite clear from the wide range of versions, studding the monograph like little dried raisins and crying out to have the life pumped back into them, that here was a universal theme of great power.
Enter two more books, inherited from my engineer-father's extensive and eclectic bookshelf. De Re Metallica by Agricola is a 16th century Latin treatise on mining and metallurgy, translated into English by Herbert and Lou Henry Hoover. (Yes, the President. He was a mining engineer before he was a politician. His wife was also a Latin scholar.) Agricola inspired The Spirit Ring's hero, the self-effacing Swiss miner's son Thur Ochs. The kobolds came from a footnote therein. And The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini of course yielded up Prospero Beneforte, and a great deal more besides. Agricola is not light reading, but I highly recommend Cellini to all comers. In it you will discover the golden saltcellar, the bronze Perseus, the mad castellan, the vision in the dungeon of the Castel Sain' Angelo, and a thousand other delightful or horrifying details of the times, as well as that wonderful egotistical monster, Cellini himself.
A couple dozen more research books followed in my reading (you will find Lorenzo d'Medici's spirit ring in the gorgeously illustrated Europe 1492 by Franco Cardini), but these three were the generative seeds.
Cellini leaves no record of ever having had a daughter. Fiametta is my own creation.
About The Author
Lois McMaster Bujold was born in 1949, the daughter of an engineering professor at Ohio State University, from whom she picked up her early interest in science fiction. She now lives in Minneapolis, and has two grown children. She began writing with the aim of professional publication in 1982. She wrote three novels in three years; in October of 1985, all three sold to Baen Books, launching her career. Bujold went on to write many other books for Baen, mostly featuring her popular character Miles Naismith Vorkosigan, his family, friends, and enemies. Her books have been translated into twenty-one languages. Her recent fantasy from Eos includes the award-winning Chalion series and the Sharing Knife series.
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Photo by Carol Collins
Table of Contents
Title Page
Books by Lois McMaster Bujold
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Epilogue
Author's Note
About The Author
Lois McMaster Bujold, The Spirit Ring
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