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NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK • NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS' CHOICE • From the bestselling historian and National Book Critics Circle Award finalist, the moving untold story of the eighteenth-century men and women behind the making of Handel’s Messiah.

"A delicious history of music, power, love, genius, royalty and adventure."—Simon Sebag Montefiore, author of The Romanovs

"A book of power and glory, brimming with emotion and dazzling in its reach."—Stacy Schiff, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Cleopatra and The Witches

George Frideric Handel’s Messiah is arguably the greatest piece of participatory art ever created. Adored by millions, it is performed each year by renowned choirs and orchestras, as well as by people singing along on their cell phones.

But this work of triumphant joy was born in a worried age. Britain in the early Enlightenment was a place of astonishing creativity but also the seat of an empire mired in war, enslavement, and conflicts over everything from the legitimacy of government to the meaning of truth. Against this turbulent background, prize-winning author Charles King has crafted a cinematic drama of the troubled lives that shaped this masterpiece of hope.

Every Valley presents a depressive dissenter stirred to action by an ancient prophecy; an actress plagued by an abusive husband and public scorn; a brave sea captain and a penniless philanthropist; an African Muslim man held captive in the American colonies and planning a daring plan for getting back home. At center stage is Handel himself, composer to kings but, at midlife, in some ill health and straining to keep an audience’s attention. Set amid royal intrigue, theater scandals, and political conspiracies, Every Valley is entertaining, inspiring, and unforgettable.