The Girl with the Secret Name

"'It is the eve of Beatriz de Luna’s 12th birthday and her mind is filled with fashionable clothes, party entertainers and presents. But church-going Beatriz’s biggest birthday surprise is the revelation that she is Jewish. And in 16th-century Portugal, that means danger. Beatriz’s struggle to come to terms with her new identity is well portrayed, and will speak to 21st-century readers. But the story soon moves on to her adulthood, when Beatriz (concealing her Jewish name, Gracia Nasi), is married to a wealthy merchant, who is also a converso (hidden Jew) – and part of a network helping captured conversos escape the Inquisition. The Girl with the Secret Name by Yael Zoldan (Green Bean Books, £12.99), with its tapestried backdrop of 16th-century Europe, has the historical and emotional heft of Maggie O’Farrell’s The Marriage Portrait and the immediacy of contemporary YA, and will bring the (fictionalised) story of a real-life Jewish feminist heroine to a wider teen and YA readership." ~Angela Kiverstein, The Jewish Chronicle