I did not care for this book. I am not against depressing story lines, having read and loved, Sophie's Choice. This book, however, read as a contrived, dark, adult fairy tale, filled with rape, kidnapping, syphilis, the predictable evil step mother (in this case, evil mother-in-law) and an ending you could see coming for miles. It was also highly improbable and the author never explained why Moses' hearing went unaffected, even as an infant, while those around him writhed in pain and experienced eventual, if not instantaneous, deafness, whenever the bells rang. Many times the story dragged for pages creating interminable boredom. My book club read it and out of eight people, three did not like it, two thought it average and three enjoyed it. I would rather have spent my time reading something of better quality, without the whining, childish dialogue. I am bewildered by some reviewers who called it "magical", "epic", and "luminous". Paraphrasing Publisher's Weekly, who described it as a "melodramatic, overwrought plot", I would describe its love story genre less elegantly as, Danielle-Steel-In-The Middle-Ages.