The Rose of Balarm: A Tale of 12th-Century Sicily

This intriguing transformation turns a legend into a person of history.The patron saint of Palermo, Italy (romanized as Balarm) is Santa Rosalia Sinibaldi. There's no documented proof of her existence, so this historical tale imagines how Rosalia (Rusùlia in the book) may have lived, from her birth in 1130 to her death in 1165.The daughter of a Lombard count and a Norman noblewoman, she was also a distant cousin of King Roger II (Rujari). Educated in the Norman palace of Qasr, Rusùlia was g...