A Single Witness

 It is 1757. In the mountain village of Piovene, outside Venice, 13-year-old Anna Maria Bonon lives a spartan life with her father and grandmother. In the daytime, she cards wool at the local mill. At home, she raises silkworms. Her father, Giacomo, scrambles for work and drinks his sorrows away at the osteria. When Giacomo is arrested for attempted murder, Anna Maria and her grandmother walk 27 kilometres to the court in Vicenza to learn what will become of him. But instead of trying to free him, Anna Maria accuses him of unspeakable crimes against her. The Council of Ten arrive from Venice to investigate. Challenged by the priest and her grandmother to say she lied, Anna Maria is torn between loyalty to her elders and telling the truth. Drawing closely on original trial documents from the Venetian archives, prize-winning author Christine Balint brings to light the true story of Anna Maria and her brave pursuit of justice at a time when a man’s authority over his family was unquestioned.

Water Music

In eighteenth-century Venice, orphan Lucietta is raised by a fisherman’s family yet supported by a secret benefactor to study music. At 16, she takes up her position at the Derelitti Convent, one of the prestigious musical orphanages for girls, playing the violin in the ensemble and training the younger musicians. Confronted by her benefactor’s plans for her life, Lucietta uncovers the true legacy of the women who came before and her role in bridging the past.

Ophelia’s Fan

Ophelia’s Fan reimagines the bittersweet life of Harriet Smithson, the Irish tragedienne who inspired Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique. With the arrival of Charles Kemble’s English Theatre troupe in Paris in 1827, the Odeon Theatre is awash with the drama and music of Shakespeare. Harriet is Ophelia. The French Romantics swoon, and high-society women plait straw in their hair in honour of her mad maid. The fiery composer Hector Berlioz falls in love, and their passionate affair culminates in a tumultuous marriage.

The Salt Letters

The Salt Letters evokes a young woman’s flight from England to Australia in 1854. In steerage, she joins other unmarried women, where the horrors of their close confinement bring an unraveling of secrets no one can control. Sarah endures, longing for her mother’s forgiveness and the sweetness of Richard’s breath. As she draws closer to her new land, she becomes increasingly haunted by her own tale and the letter home she cannot write. Moving between the voyage in which pigs run through flooded living quarters to the hallucinatory visions induced by the doldrums, Christine Balint’s wondrous debut novel brings us close to a time when the world was still a place to be discovered.

 

 

 

 

 

 

© Christine Balint, 2026