What do we know about the wife of Henry Hudson? Mrs. ‎Magellan? La Signora Christopher Columbus? History ‎celebrates the exploits of male adventurers but tells us very ‎little about their wives who were left at home. Eva of ‎Ancona, Italy, challenges this narrative. Eva is the young ‎wife of ‘Jacob of Ancona', a thirteenth-century merchant, ‎sailor, scholar and Jew, who, as the story goes, travelled to ‎China four years before Marco Polo. ‎
‎ The Jewels of Dadu employs folklore and myth but is ‎essentially a frame tale. The frame is Eva's daily rounds ‎through the markets of medieval Ancona tending the family ‎business in Jacob's absence while navigating a lovestruck ‎rabbi and the education of a growing boy. The tales are ‎spun evenings at bedtime when, armed with an old map and ‎an imagination, Eva invents Jacob's voyage for their little ‎son over nearly three years, or, a thousand-and-one nights.