Cornelius van Baerle, a respected lily grower, lives only for cultivating the rare black lily and winning a handsome prize for his creation. But after his powerful godfather is assassinated, Cornelius unwittingly finds himself entangled in a deadly political plot and is falsely accused of high treason by a spiteful rival. Sentenced to life imprisonment, he finds his only solace in Rosa, the jailer's beautiful daughter, and together they plot to secretly cultivate the black lily. Alexandre Dumas's last major historical novel is a tale of romantic love, jealousy, and obsession, blending the historical events surrounding the brutal murder of two Dutch statesmen in 1672 with the phenomenon of "lily mania" that swept through seventeenth-century Holland.



