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jennifer wizbowski
"Do not hurry, do not rest." - Goethe
All About Me
Jennifer Wizbowski spent her childhood days lost among the spines of her favorite books. Inspired by the daffodil fields of Wordsworth and the babbling brooks of Shakespeare, she earned her bachelor’s in English literature, a minor in music, and a secondary teaching credential, then wrote freelance for local business journals, taught in classrooms, and authored a Teen and Tween column for a parent magazine—all while raising her family.
As those years ended, she knew it was the right time to pursue her lifelong aspiration of bringing her own books to life. She now devotes herself to illuminating everyday women’s stories often lost in the shadows of history, revealing how they became heroines of their own time and place.
My HP Books
COMING FALL OF 2025
Venice, 1710
Poinsettia Girl is based on the true story of Agata de la Pieta, an orphan musician of the Ospedale de la Pieta .
Ten-year-old Agata’s world is shaken at the sudden death of her mother. Left only with her egregious father, a working musician in Venice, her ailing grandmother sends her to the well-known orphanage, hidden from everything she’s ever known.
Agata auditions for the conservatory style music school where music is both salvation and spectacle. Hidden behind ornate metal grates, adorned with poinsettias in their hair, the singers are veiled in mystery, their ethereal music drawing noble audiences, including gilded young men who see them as treasures—not only for their sound but as coveted marriage prizes.
Just as she reaches the height of her musical journey, a marriage proposal from someone outside the audience tempts her with the promise of a new life—a return to the old neighborhood she’s longed for and a home she barely remembers. Torn between the music that has defined her and the hope of belonging to a family, Agata must confront the most profound question of her life: is her purpose rooted in the music that shaped her, or in the love that might free her?
AUTHOR NOTES
The Ospedale della Pieta was one of four Ospedale’s, founded in fourteenth-century Venice for the care of abandoned infants. It housed and educated foundlings for thousands of years. The Pieta tested the foundling’s musical aptitude at an early age and they either went the path of progressing through a conservatory style music education or more domestic arts such as lace making and silk cleaning.
The women of the Pieta were meticulous record keepers. There are lists of masses, prayers, songs, as well as liturgical calendars when they performed them specifically. Agata della Pieta was a soprano who composed Novo Aprili in F. All the foundlings, teachers, and Maestro di Coro (conductors) I’ve written about were contemporaries of Agata and would have passed one another in the halls.
The building was rebuilt in the mid-1600s and stands today as the four-story white building facing the Lido today as the Hotel Metropole. It stands directly next door to the Chiesa della Pieta (the church where the Coro performed) in their lace collars and live poinsettias for every concert.
