Book Description

The Byzantine Empire is a time and place of enlightenment and diversity, but also zealous piety. Young Adila hungers for this wealth of culture, but as a girl, she’s barred from partaking in the richness of society. Her abusive father’s solution is to force her to be his longed-for son, Adilsen. He moves their family from Finland to an abbey village in Russia. Outwardly, Adilsen goes along with her father’s disguise. It allows her to enter the all-male religious order, where she discovers her love of music, knowledge and God. But Adila lives with the constant threat of her secret being exposed. Adila flourishes in the choir, and the Bishop of Constantinople selects her to travel to the capitol. But he doesn’t choose her for her singing The Bishop wants Adilsen as a pawn in his treasonous scheme, entangling her in political corruption at the highest levels of the empire. At the Byzantine monastery in Constantinople, Adilsen must deceive everyone to conceal her true gender. But then she falls in love with Majidi, a visiting dignitary from the far south of the realm. When she shocks the Bishop with a dramatic miscarriage, he banishes her to Majidi’s harem in Trebizond. Enslaved in the citadel, she must now fight the harem hierarchy to escape rape, abuse and death. As a boy, Adila’s resourcefulness and strength were lauded, but as a concubine, she is a dangerous threat to tradition. SIRENS’ SONG is an epic historical fiction adventure of Adila growing into a forceful, intelligent, independent woman in a time when these qualities in a female could get her killed. Through music, spirituality and the challenges of loving a man of a different race and religion, Adila learns from those on the fringes of society how to battle through layers of convention, and claim power in her femininity.