This book has a clumsy exposition which made me want to stop reading almost immediately. Unfortunately, I was the one who picked it for my book club so I felt compelled to finish it. Once Talitha Getty was introduced in Chapter 12, it got slightly better. Good historical fiction can transport you to that time period and the reader becomes engrossed in the characters, the era and the culture. Bad historical fiction makes you laugh at the name dropping of real people just to make it seem well researched. I would not recommend this book at all.