The last day of National Banned Books Week was waning into a listless Saturday afternoon, but I was still flush with my presentation, still fueled by the memory of a long-dead woman who had possessed my heart for the year it took me to write about her. She had lived 1,600 years before my birth, and had been murdered – by a man now deemed a Christian Saint. Brilliant and beautiful, daring and audacious, and silenced. . . brutally.

For an hour I had lectured on her life and times, and then entertained a Q&A with the audience for another hour before thanking them for turning out on this afternoon. I had signed books, I had shaken hands, and the room was growing vacant of bodies and sound.

“She should have kept her mouth shut.”
I stared hard at the well-dressed man who watched me.

- snip -

Mathematician, astronomer, philosopher, teacher, and curator of Alexandria’s Great Library. Essentially she achieved the “Renaissance man” ideal a thousand years before it was fashionable. And equipped with a sharpness of wit and tongue, she was a female Achilles when it came to debate and audacity.