Anita dies young. Two weeks before she turns sixteen. We come to know that her life reflects and is a strange imitation of the life of the great Hypatia who lived in Alexandria at the time when Christianity began to spread and be thrust around the world. The great library of Alexandria, it is speculated, was burned by either fanatical Christians or Arabs, and Hypatia was tortured to death. Hypatia too did something with the cloth soaked in her menstrual blood that has a parallel in Anita's life.
Norm sees to that.
This is a book that took me by surprise in more ways than one. The author says the book was written through him and not by him for he was able to finish the first draft of it in two months, writing every evening from 9 p.m. to 4 a.m. For a scientist to confess to such an experience could mean disaster. But this is not presented merely as a scientific treatise but as a wonderful fable, a mystery novel with rich scientific ideas but which should be accessible to most general readers.