<P>The year is 1502, and seven-year-old Bianca de Nevada lives perched high above the rolling hills and valleys of Tuscany and Umbria at Montefiore, the farm of her beloved father, Don Vincente.</P> <P> But one day a noble entourage makes its way up the winding slopes to the farm-and the world comes to Montefiore. In the presence of Cesare Borgia and his sister, the lovely and vain Lucrezia-decadent children of a wicked pope-no one can claim innocence for long. When Borgia sends Don Vicente on a years-long quest to reclaim a relic of the original Tree of Knowledge, he leaves Bianca under the care-so to speak-of Lucrezia. She plots a dire fate for the young girl in the woods below the farm, but in the dark forest there can be found salvation as well . . . </P> <P> The eye is always caught by light, but shadows have more to say.</P>