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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.
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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.
editorial reviews
BOOKLIFE - PUBLISHER'S WEEKLY REVIEW
Wizbowski’s moving historical debut opens in 1710 Venice with a funeral. Ten-year-old Agata Farusi has just lost her mother, her mercurial violinist father is inconsolable, and her only refuge is her Nonna, a strong-willed baker determined to protect her granddaughter from her son-in-law’s volatility. Life in the San Canciano quarter offers fleeting warmth, neighbors double as family, and the bakery hums with routine, but Agata’s fragile world begins to fracture under her father’s greed and grief. To save her, Nonna makes a heartbreaking decision, sending her to the Ospedale della Pietà—a real-life convent and music school, originally founded in the 14th century, whose history Wizbowski draws from to craft Agata’s story.
Here, the Pietà is pulled and pushed between two main forces: the Madonna, the institution’s dignified head, who rules with quiet compassion and moral clarity while offering Agata a rare model of authority tempered by grace; and Prudenza, her severe second-in-command, embodying the Pietà’s harsher side—discipline without mercy, and faith without softness. Within that cloistered world, Agata’s grief initially silences her, but, with the kindness of Discrete Margarita and the devotion of her peers—especially her roommate Candida and the gifted Maestra Elena—Agata is finally able to find her voice. The coveted title of Poinsettia Girl, bestowed on the Pietà’s brightest star, becomes both Agata’s dream and her test, as she faces jealousy, betrayal, and a revelation that redefines her past.
Wizbowski's writing is tender and lyrical, vividly portraying the heart of a child and her gradual transformation into a woman—and an artist, who realizes that her work “has taken away my twisted feelings and hurt and hurled them somewhere they can’t taunt me anymore.” At its core, this novel is about those institutionalized—by convent walls, by art, by love—and the tug between their longing for freedom and their fear of it.
Takeaway: Tender portrayal of young girl granted freedom through song.
Comparable Titles: Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet, Lauren Kate’s The Orphan’s Song.
Production grades
Cover: A
Design and typography: A
Editing: A
Marketing copy: A
