Karen Mann compels us not to read but to live her novel. In THE WOMAN OF LA MANCHA, Mann immediately transports us across centuries to Spain, where we find ourselves in the body of a child who wakes up in a peasant's cart and has no idea who she is.

Like a baby, she experiences the world through her senses and an intuitive sense of friend and foe, of safety and danger.

We grow with her and feel the inevitable stirrings of body and mind. To what extent, she questions, are the rules and prohibitions of church and state to be cherished or flouted? Where does one find the strength to overcome trauma and begin again? And what of love and kindness and their dark twins, hatred and cruelty?

For all the differences between straw, silk, and gold, our protagonist finds delight in humble rural life, in the luxuriousness of forbidden pleasures, and in the splendor of wealth without measure.

This is a book about courage in both an extraordinary young woman and an extraordinary young man. Their lives will awaken your senses and engage your heart and mind. You won't want to leave their world, and you won t want for this novel to end.