W3 Book Club-“Murder of a Medici Princess” by Caroline P. Murphy

by Teri E. Popp & Laura Chin, Tastemakers in Residence

Summertime offers us the opportunity to enjoy outdoor, socially distanced time together during the Covid 19 pandemic. And W3 Book Club took this chance to have some fun together, while still appropriately apart!!

Fortuitously, one of our book club members celebrated a milestone birthday, giving us the opportunity to dress in high fashion and pay homage to our birthday queen. For this raucous event, we “visited” the Renaissance city of Florence, Italy during the time of Cosimo de Medici, the first Grand Duke of Tuscany.

We started our evening with a socially distanced masked promenade, with appropriately spaced group photos to follow.

Queen Laurie then regally embarked in her gondola with her dashing gondoliers alongside her king (please note that my son-in-law generously loaned us his canoe/gondola, and both he and my husband were really good sports about the costumed gondoliers).

During a sumptuous repast (individual boxed Mediterranean chicken dinners, small champagne bottles with straws, and wine in a can), we discussed the novel, “Murder of a Medici Princess.” The book tells the story of Princess Isabella, daughter of Cosimo de Medici. Isabella led a charmed and independent life at a time when most women did not. Her father allowed her the freedom to live as she chose, although he did require she marry a minor nobleman to secure the southern border of the Medici empire. Unfortunately for Isabella, after her father’s death, her husband strangled her at an isolated country villa, thus ending her remarkable life.

Please join W3 next month as we virtually share the book “City of Girls” by Elizabeth Gilbert, learning about life in the theater scene during the 1940’s!