This fiction is based on fact: the 12th century love letters of the novel’s main character, Heloise, the most brilliant and learned woman of Christian Europe, who at 17 fell in love with Peter Abelard, a celebrated philosopher. Although he was considered a churchman and forbidden to marry, the couple secretly wed. “The extraordinary doesn’t scare me,” Heloise said, after she bore him a child.

Discovered, they were forcibly separated and Abelard viciously punished with castration. Both devoted themselves to contemplative lives. He became a monk and established a religious order. She went on to found a great convent, The Paraclete, and ever held out hope that they might be reunited.