In a near-future Canada transformed by plague, an unlikely Lily Dalriada is chosen for sainthood by the ruling Church of the Survivors. But she soon becomes an outcast who risks contracting the plague when she conceives a child outside the Church s sanctioned methods. Now, separated from her daughter and pursued by the Church, Lily seeks refuge in a shadowy resistance movement. But she soon finds herself transported into plague-dominated 16th century Renaissance Florence. Has she really traveled back through time? Is the world around her an alternate reality, virtual reality, or merely the product of her own desperate imagination? This vivid, compelling novel evokes the dark and sensuous complexity of two worlds, both haunted by the spectre of death and control."