Josette Abruzzini

WHAT IF…. Johannes Vermeer, the beloved Dutch painter, and Antoni van Leeuwenhoek, the uneducated cloth merchant who discovered microbes, were friends? Such is the premise of this 55,000-word MG historical novel, In Vermeer’s Shadow: The Tale of a Scientist & an Artist.

Young Antoni is sent away to school following his mother’s remarriage. He thinks his friend, Johann, with a loving family, is the luckiest boy in Delft. As a sixteen-year-old, Antoni must surrender his dream of a formal education and submit to an apprenticeship. He vows to live an honest life as a cloth merchant. Johann’s paintings bring him adulation, but his uncompromising artistry results in a host of challenges he is ill-prepared to deal with. Amid political chaos, Antoni must choose between honoring his friendship with Johann, and maintaining his reputation as an honest man.

In Vermeer’s Shadow is a carefully-researched novel about friends whose lives are shaped by love, war, disease, and new ideas of Holland’s Golden Age.  Does Antoni find the love that he missed as a child? How does he reconcile his need for truth and his friendship with Johann? Does he become the scholar he had always hoped to be?

A former teacher, I’ve designed this cross-curricular vehicle to introduce the history of 17th century science and art, all within a compelling story. This past July, I was published in STEAM-Ed Magazine, and in Downhome Magazine.

If you are curious to read more, I’d be thrilled to send my manuscript your way.