Dr. Florence Weinberg

Born in the high desert country, in Alamagordo, New Mexico, Florence loved exploring the wilderness on foot and horseback. Those grandiose landscapes formed her sensibility. Hidden pockets of unexpected greenery tucked away near springs in folds of barren mountainsides spoke to her of gentleness and beauty in an otherwise harsh world. She published her first poem in a children's magazine shortly after she learned to read at age four; wrote her first 'novel' at age six, entitled Ywain, King of All Cats. She illustrated the 'book' herself.

She traveled extensively with her military family during World Ward II. With her husband the brilliant scholar and teacher, Kurt Weinberg, she worked and traveled in Canada, Germany, France, and Spain. After earning her PhD, she taught for twenty-two years at St. John Fisher College in Rochester, NY, and for ten at Trinity University in San Antonio. She published four scholarly books, many articles and book reviews, doing research in the U.S. and abroad.

When, after retiring in 1999, she was freed from academia to devote herself to writing fiction, she produced ten novels, ranging from fantasy to historical romance and mystery. Six are in print as well as one in press: an historical romance about the French Renaissance, published in France in French translation by Editions Lyonnaises d'Art et d'Histoire, three historical mysteries starring the 18th-century Jesuit missionary, Father Ignaz (Ygnacio) Pfefferkorn. Two of these set in the Sonora Desert, the third in an ancient monastery in Spain. The book in press is a further Pfefferkorn mystery that follows his fate after his release from Spanish prison: Unrest in Eden. Four of the historical novels have received a total of eight awards, some of them multiple: Apache Lance, Franciscan Cross (three awards), about the founding of San Antonio, Seven Cities of Mud (one award), depicting the fate of the small Franciscan expedition up the Rio Grande in 1581-82, forty years after Coronado, Sonora Moonlight (one award), about Father Ygnacio’s confrontation with a Pima Indian medicine man and his search for the murderer of a local white rancher by beheading and crucifixion, Sonora Wind (three awards), about Father Ygnacio’s pursuit of the murderer of an army captain sent to inspect the mission’s books, together with a depiction of his arrest and expulsion along with all Jesuits from Spain and the colonies in 1767, and The Storks of La
Caridad, (nominated for the Global e-Book Award), where Father Ygnacio, a prisoner of the Spanish Crown in an ancient monastery, is asked to catch a stealthy, in-house murderer.

Her favorite animals are horses-an intense love affair over many years-and cats, her constant companions. She enjoys music, traveling, hiking, biking, gardening, and swimming.

Scholarly works:

The Wine and the Will: Rabelais's Bacchic Christianity (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1972)

Gargantua in a Convex Mirror: Fischart's View of Rabelais (New York and Berne: Peter Lang, 1986)

The Cave: The Evolution of a Metaphoric Field from Homer to Ariosto (New York and Berne: Peter Lang, 1986)

Rabelais et les leçons du rire: paraboles évangéliques et néoplatoniciennes (Orléans: Editions Paradigme, 2000)

In addition, many articles in learned journals on French and Spanish Renaissance subjects, contributions to literary dictionaries, Festschrifts, collected volumes, etc. Also, many reviews in specialized journals on French literature both in this country and abroad.

Contact Florence at florenceweinberg@juno.com