The Girl with the Secret Name (Paperback)

‘Doña Gracia Mendes Nasi, the subject of Yael Zoldan’s work of middle-grade historical fiction, was the daughter of a wealthy and influential Jewish family who had left Spain and settled in Portugal. Their financial usefulness to those in power temporarily offered some protection, but eventually they left the Iberian Peninsula entirely. The Girl with the Secret Name tells the story of how Gracia dedicated her life to supporting Jewish refugees and Jewish communal life in Italy, Turkey, and the Ottoman territory of Palestine… Zoldan’s engaging novel captures the quiet defiance and pragmatism of Doña Gracia Mendes Nasi’s emblematic Jewish life.’

Emily Schneider, Jewish Book Council

'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 newspaper