Rosina Lippi

Rosina Lippi is a novelist and former linguistics professor who publishes historical fiction under the name Sara Donati. Berkley issued Where the Light Enters in 2019 under that byline, continuing the Waverly Place story begun in The Gilded Hour. Set in New York during 1884, it follows physicians Sophie and Anna Savard as they care for underserved women and become involved in investigations led by Anna’s husband, Detective-Sergeant Jack Mezzanotte. The novel draws on medical history, women’s professional lives, immigration, and the city’s sharply divided neighborhoods. Lippi’s academic work includes English with an Accent, while her fiction under her own name includes the PEN/Hemingway Award-winning Homestead. As Sara Donati, she also wrote the six-volume Wilderness sequence, which follows the Bonner family across early American history. Where the Light Enters links that larger family saga to a later generation, using archival detail and recurring characters to connect private relationships with public debates about medicine and women’s rights.