Chasing Beatrice - John Van Natta

If Dante had left a journal, what would it say about how he came to write his masterpiece, The ‎Divine Comedy? What if he actually took a journey into a Hell-on-Earth and then continued ‎upwards towards the stars? If his great love, Beatrice, had not died young after all, could he find ‎her? If so, was there still time for them?‎Beginning with an aggrieved father's request to repair his daughter's reputation-which meant it ‎was time to write again- at the pace of a theme park ride the reader and Dante set out across the ‎horizon of history from pagan times up through the early 1300s on an Easter Weekend pilgrimage ‎in 1302. Seeking the woman he loves, the poet first meets a cast of characters with immutable ‎assignments in the city of Dis. Surviving this frightening place, with his friend, da Forli, he ‎continues his quest, buoyed by tales of a nunnery where a beautiful woman now lives. Sightings ‎of a woman who might be his Beatrice are described not by whispery souls but by sinners seeking ‎to accomplish a heavenly repose. The poet sees their dream and their redemptive strivings as ‎being like his own. Whether in references to the old and new testaments as taught by the ‎Catholic Church or in reprises of Roman history or in recollections of Medieval Italy, embroiled ‎in the factional enmity of families and political parties, always in the background is a human love ‎story. Let the reader participate in this imagination and join Dante in Chasing Beatrice. ‎