The Everlasting: A Novel

Written by Katy Simpson Smith

Narrated by January LaVoy, Jeremy Arthur, Graham Halstead and 2 more

""Only Katy Simpson Smith could have written a novel of such elegance, emotional power, and grace. The Everlasting, a quadruple love story spanning two millennia, is no less than the story of love itself—its frustrations and thrills, its blunders and transcendent glories. Meraviglioso.""—Nathaniel Rich, author of King Zeno

From a supremely talented author comes this brilliant and inventive novel, set in Rome in four different centuries, that explores love in all its various incarnations and ponders elemental questions of good and evil, obedience and free will that connect four unforgettable lives.

Spanning two thousand years, The Everlasting follows four characters whose struggles resonate across the centuries: an early Christian child martyr; a medieval monk on crypt duty in a church; a Medici princess of Moorish descent; and a contemporary field biologist conducting an illicit affair.

Outsiders to a city layered and dense with history, this quartet separated by time grapple with the physicality of bodies, the necessity for sacrifice, and the power of love to sustain and challenge faith. Their small rebellions are witnessed and provoked by an omniscient, time-traveling Satan who, though incorporeal, nonetheless suffers from a heart in search of repair.

As their dramas unfold amid the brick, marble, and ghosts of Rome, they each must decide what it means to be good. Twelve-year old Prisca defiles the scrolls of her father’s library. Felix, a holy man, watches his friend’s body decay and is reminded of the first boy he loved passionately. Giulia de’ Medici, a beauty with dark skin and limitless wealth, wants to deliver herself from her unborn child. Tom, an American biologist studying the lives of the smallest creatures, cannot pinpoint when his own marriage began to die. As each of these conflicted people struggles with forces they cannot control, their circumstances raise a profound and timeless question at the heart of faith: What is our duty to each other, and what will God forgive? 

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperAudio
• Release date: Mar 24, 2020
• ISBN: 9780062989277

Katy Simpson Smith

Katy Simpson Smith was born and raised in Jackson, Mississippi. She attended Mount Holyoke College and received a PhD in history from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars. She has been working as an adjunct professor at Tulane University and has published a study of early American motherhood, We HaveRaised All of You: Motherhood in the South, 1750–1835. She lives in New Orleans.

Reviews for The Everlasting

[maryreinert · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Eight chapters tell the stories of four individuals in four different time periods all set in Rome. One man some sort of micro-biologist is in Rome studying some sort of tiny creature. The second set in the 1500's is about a bi-racial Medici who is pregnant but doesn't want to be. The third is a monk whose job in the 800's is to take care of the decaying bodies of other monks and the last set in the 100's is of Saint Prisca, a young girl who is killed because he is a Christian. Part of this book was great reading and part was just totally convoluted. There were some sentences that just didn't seem to make sense. It is supposed to be something about faith and fate, etc., but wasn't worth the effort to read all.

[shazjhb · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Unusual book. Listened to it. No one I know would like this book