The Turquoise Ring

Acclaimed novelist Grace Tiffany, author of My Father Had a Daughter and Will, retells Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice from the perspective of five unusual women-and offers a radical new portrait of the controversial literary character Shylock the moneylender.

In 1568, twenty-one-year-old Shiloh ben Gozán flees the Spanish Inquisition to live openly as a Jew in Venice. He brings with him a baby daughter and an oddly made turquoise ring, given to him by a woman he cannot forget. As this ring is hidden, stolen, traded, lost, and finally found again, it shapes not just Shilo's life but that of his great enemy and business rival, Antonio di Argento, whom he finally- and horrifyingly-confronts in a Venetian courtroom. The ring also becomes entangled in the fortunes of five women who deeply affect Shiloh's life: Leah, his first love; Jessica, his rebellious daughter; Nerissa, an irrepressible maidservant; Portia, an outrageously rich and alarmingly intelligent heiress; and Xanthe, a Spanish refugee who can unlock the secret of his past.

Grace Tiffany is a professor of Shakespeare and Renaissance Drama at Western Michigan University. She has taught Shakespeare at Fordham University, the University of New Orleans, and the University of Notre Dame, where she obtained her doctorate.