The Confessions of Anna María

"COMPELLING!" "A TRIUMPH OF HISTORICAL FICTION!" "AN EPIC TOUR DE FORCE!" The Confessions of Anna María, the riveting ninth novel by Paul Koppisch, traces the tragic life of Anna María Santiago, the daughter of a wealthy merchant ship captain from Seville, Spain beginning in the year 1519 amidst the Age of Conquest in the New World. After setting out from Seville at the young age of thirteen, a passenger on her father's ship, Anna María is shipwrecked, eventually washing up on a beach in what is present day Yucatan, Mexico. Without water or food and near death, she reluctantly follows, and is later taken in by a strange and exotic people who eventually accept her as one of their own. However, her former countrymen, searching for gold in the Yucatan and bent on conquest under the guise of converting heathens to Christianity, could destroy everything she comes to hold dear in this new world. The Confessions of Anna Maria is a thrilling historical adventure set in the past, but the existential themes at the heart of Koppisch's novel-the rawness of life, the precious inner-workings of nature, the drive to continue on in the face of challenges-are as timely as they come.